Unsettling Intercultural Communication: Rethinking Colonialism through Indigeneity: 32 (Critical Intercultural Communication Studies)

Intercultural communication scholars have done important work tracing how the legacies of colonialism continue to structure our world. Missing from this corpus, however, is sustained attention to (North American) Indigeneity and its repression under settler colonialism as foundationally linked to contemporary imperialisms and Euro-American domination.

Unsettling Intercultural Communication brings together essays by Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors that make a strong case for centering Indigeneity and, by extension, settler-colonialism, as core analytics that can transform the field. Drawing upon the insights of critical Indigenous studies and settler-colonial studies, the contributors approach Indigeneity not as an additive but central concept that demands thorough engagement by intercultural communication scholars if we are to make sense of the unequal and violence-ridden world that we live in. In doing so, they open some of the core intercultural concepts to deeper examination.

Santhosh Chandrashekar (Ph.D., University of New Mexico) is an Associate Professor in Communication Studies at the University of Denver. He lives and works on the unceded ancestral territories of the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and other Indigenous nations. Originally from the Indian subcontinent, he lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a decade where Indigenous people taught him about how settler colonialism continues to be a pressing reality in their lives and how they continue to thrive despite its effects. His research is focused on analyzing the entanglement of colonialism and race as they intersect with gender, sexuality, religion, and nationalism (among others); caste/ism; and Islamophobia. His work has appeared in the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Western Journal of Communication, and Cultural Studies↔Critical Methodologies, among others.

Bernadette Marie Calafell (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) is a queer Chicana and hip-hop feminist living in the Pacific Northwest. She is a Professor of Latina/ox studies in the department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. Her research is focused on queer of color theory, Latina/o/x studies, women of color feminisms, performance studies, and monstrosity. She has co-edited six books and authored Latina/o Communication Studies: Theorizing Performance and Monstrosity, Performance, and Race in Contemporary Culture.