Writing Across Culture: An Introduction to Study Abroad and the Writing Process

This book is about culture shock and the writing process. For a student, the relationship between writing and the challenge of living in a foreign culture may not be obvious. The purpose of Writing Across Culture is to aid the student in documenting and analyzing the connection. If culture can be broadly defined as the unwritten rules of every-day life, one effective method for learning these rules is to write about them as they are discovered. In this way, it is possible to see writing as a tool for cultural inquiry and comprehension, and, hence, an antidote for culture shock. Writing Across Culture encourages its readers to become writers engaged in a dialogue – between the individual and the new society – about everyday cultural differences.

The Authors: Kenneth Wagner is the Executive Director of The Swedish Program at Stockholm University. He earned his doctorate in Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh and was formerly an Assistant Professor in Sociology at Hamilton College. Wagner, who has studied and taught abroad in Basel, Switzerland, and in Stockholm, Sweden, has published numerous articles in professional journals.
Tony Magistrale is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Vermont. He has published extensively in the field of writing and in English Literature. Magistrale earned his doctorate in English at the University of Pittsburgh and spent a year at the University of Milan as a Fulbright Scholar.