This issue marks my first issue as Editor of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. I take the reins from Todd Sandel who went above and beyond in his editorship duties, seeing some incredible scholarship through the publication process. In fact, this issue consists of those essays that he shepherded through the end of his editorship.
My editorial vision for JIIC is informed by my positionality as a cisgender queer Chicana scholar. I understand first-hand the challenges that often face scholars of color in publishing, particularly when publishing work about race and ethnicity, or other aspects of intersectional lived experiences. I also know the importance of having scholars of color in key positions, for example, as journal editors or on editorial boards, and how this signals Others to join the conversation. Keeping this experience in mind, I have assembled an editorial board that I believe is truly diverse in terms of orientations to culture, methodologies, foci, experience, and compositional diversity. This board will serve to maintain the research tradition of the journal, while also signaling an invitation for new voices and perspectives to enter the conversation.
Given recent discussion and activism around #communicationsowhite, it is now more important than ever to undertake concrete and sustained commitments and actions toward making the field and its journals more inclusive. We in international and intercultural communication are not immune from these critiques and calls for action. This requires that we consider the politics of citation, theory, method, gatekeeping, and audience. I am also keenly aware of the need to bring new perspectives to the journal while honoring the diversity of perspectives already present in the journal. I will maintain the integrity of the journal’s multi-perspective and methodological approach to international and intercultural communication. My vision is not to radically shift the journal, but instead to issue a call for Others to see themselves as part of the existing fabric of JIIC, and be willing to chart new courses that have yet to be imagined in the study of international and intercultural communication. In intercultural communication we have witnessed methodological shifts from post-positivism, to interpretative methods, to the critical-rhetorical paradigm, and now to the performative. My intent is to publish all of these methodological approaches to culture.
My editorial vision is also guided by encouraging more performative approaches, both theoretically and methodologically, to intercultural and international communication. There is an inherent relationship between performance studies and intercultural communication that has yet to be fully explored in the pages of our journals, in particular JIIC. For example, Dwight Conquergood was not simply a scholar of performance, he was a scholar of culture. Conquergood, along with scholars such as Patricia Hill Collins, Cherríe Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldúa, argued that historically marginalized communities often communicate and theorize through the everyday or the performative. Much like the critical-rhetorical turn in the study of intercultural communication in the 1990s, we are now in the midst of a performative turn. This work is also increasingly being conducted by scholars from historically marginalized communities. While it can seem scary or threatening to some, I encourage us all to consider the perspective of the underside, those for whom this turn breathes life.
Furthermore, building upon the special issue of JIIC on queer intercultural communication that Karma Chávez edited in 2013, I would encourage more manuscripts that explore the relationships between globalization, sexuality, and intercultural communication. Thus, Associate Editor, Shinsuke Eguchi, will be guest editing a special issue on Global Queer and Trans* Studies.
Finally, given the various uprisings and conservative shifts across the globe it is imperative that scholars examine white supremacy, imperialism, homonationalism, indigeneity, settler colonialism, decoloniality, intersectionality, coalition-building, the Middle East and North Africa, Palestine, new social movements, digital humanities, pessimisms, futurisms, and #blacklivesmatter. These are areas of research submissions encouraged and welcomed in the pages of JIIC. I look forward to taking this journey with you over the next few years as we continue to imagine what the possibilities of intercultural and international communication can be.