‘We are so over pharaohs and pyramids!’ Re‐presenting the othered lives with young people through an international studies program

Abstract

Based on a year‐long implementation of an international studies program in a rural middle school using videoconferencing technology, this paper focuses the international presenters' interpretation of and reaction to the program through their interaction with the students. Attention here is paid to the ways that the presenters' assumptions and beliefs affect their (re)construction of their own cultures. Some contradiction in presenters' re‐presentations can be discussed further using a distinction between the social observer and the social participant, and a categorization of roles taken by the Third‐World individuals. The presenters provided following suggestions for improving the program implementation in rural learning environments: (1) teach students about the misrepresentation and cultural stereotypes in the US media; (2) provide analogies between the program presentations and the corresponding aspects of the US culture; and (3) teach them the constructs with which the various cultures are viewed and evaluated.

Keywords:

• international studies program
• cross‐cultural encounters
• social construction of identity

Notes

1. I am aware of the possible problems associated with using the word ‘culture’ as a noun form, which in itself assumes a certain sense of fixity. As Appadurai (1996) pointed out, the noun form of ‘culture,’ in comparison to its adjectival form ‘cultural,’ has implications of culture being ‘some kind of object, thing, or substance, whether physical or metaphysical.’ However, I am using the term ‘culture’ instead of ‘culturalism’ which better expresses the dimensionality of culture because that was the term used in International Studies for Henderson Schools (ISHS) and during its implementation by the teachers and the speakers.

2. All the names of people and places used in this paper are pseudonyms.