The School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics will be bringing an expert on intercultural communication to campus this spring as part of the Intercultural Competence Initiative.
Carolyn Calloway-Thomas from Indiana University Bloomington will give a talk titled, “Cultivating Intercultural Communication Competence: Learning What It Is Like to Live by Someone Else’s Light" on March 26, 2025.
Calloway-Thomas is a professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at IU Bloomington. She serves as an Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC) Advisory Expert on the World Council on Intercultural and Global Competence and is past president of the World Communication Association. In 2023, she was named one of the "Top 25 Outstanding Women Listeners in the World" by the Global Listening Centre. She is also a 2023-24 Kovener Teaching Fellow in the College of Arts + Sciences at IU Bloomington.
Her coauthored book, "Intercultural Communication between Chinese and North Americans," is forthcoming in 2024. She is also coauthoring a forthcoming book titled “Speak Out." She is coauthor of "Fifty Years of Generating Minds: The Groups Program" (2019); author of "Empathy in the Global World: An Intercultural Perspective" (2010); coauthor of "Intercultural Communication: A Text/Reader" (2007) and "Intercultural Communication: Roots and Routes" (1999); and coeditor of "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Sermonic Power of Public Discourse" (1993).
Her areas of specialization include the rhetorical/intellectual history of Black Americans, intersections between empathy and race, intercultural/interracial communication, pedagogy of empathy, and civic engagement.
"Professor Calloway-Thomas was selected due to her distinguished research trajectory on different facets of intercultural competence, such as empathy and intercultural perspective, the roots and route to intercultural communication, intercultural storytelling, health and intercultural competence, and the impact of intercultural competence in a global world," said Mariselle Meléndez, director of SLCL.
The talk will take place in the Lucy Ellis Lounge at the Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics Building.
Additional details on the event will be shared in early 2025.
The Intercultural Competence Initiative was created with support from the Presidential Initiative: Expanding the Impact of the Arts and Humanities in 2021. Its goal is to drive the systematic integration of intercultural competence across the Illinois curriculum and make it a distinguishing component of our academic culture.