MACMILLAN Global Perspectives on Dialogue in the Classroom: Cultivating Inclusive, Intersectional, and Authentic Conversations

This book explores globally-informed, culturally-rooted approaches to dialogue in the classroom. It seeks to fill gaps in communication and education literature related to decolonizing dialogue and breaking binaries by decentering Eurocentric perspectives and providing space for dialogic practices grounded in cultural wealth of students and teachers. We first describe the book’s genesis, contextualize dialogue within the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and share guiding concepts of inclusion, intersectionality, and authenticity in dialogue and pedagogy. We also distinguish dialogue from other practices and times in which dialogue may not be possible. The book brings fresh and urgent perspectives from authors across different disciplines, including ceramics, religious studies, cultural studies, communication, family therapy, and conflict resolution. The chapters distill the idea of dialogue within contexts like a bible circle, university sculpture studio, trauma and peacebuilding program, and connect dialogue to teaching, learning, and emerging ideas of power disruption, in-betweenness, and relationality. Review A book that takes seriously the moment we are in and the global nature of the imperatives for dialogue. For those interested in expanding the work of dialogue, social change and social justice, this will become required reading. An essential guide for change makers who seek to delve deeply into the new ways we have now come to understand the varieties of human experience and expression. ―Kazi Joshua, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, Whitman College, USA  A wonderful text that expands understanding of dialogue to include categories of people often given less attention, with chapters focusing on people who hail from multiple national communities as they pursue diverse goals.  This collection offers readers fresh ways to understand and appreciate others whose lives are different from their own. ―Karen Tracy, Professor Emeritus, Department of Communication, University of Colorado Boulder, USA Ashmi Desai and Hoa Nguyen have called together a room full of scholar-activist-educators who openly and vulnerably share both their discontents with a perspective of dialogue rooted in colonial, oppressive structures and their efforts to reconcile their training in dialogue with a more culturally resonant practice.  Reading this edited volume is an invitation into that room -- a unique opportunity to listen to nuanced conversations about dialogue, conversations that question how foundational practices in dialogue might actually exclude and further marginalize cultural ways that have liberatory potential.  The authors in this volume speak and write from communities often unseen, unacknowledged or silenced in discussions about dialogue; ironically, white, European men are often centered in dialogic origin stories. Global Perspectives on Dialogue in the Classroom rectifies this and, in doing so, challenges readers to rethink how we came to learn about dialogue, what we believe constitutes dialogue and, most importantly, the purposes of dialogue.  The authors included in this volume provide a vision for dialogue as community engagement, as organizing, as protest and as activism.  This book was born from a wondering about a standard practice in dialogue, one I've used many times myself, and blossomed into this lovely, challenging, insightful text that unseats assumptions in the field and challenges practitioners to see the potential of dialogue for social change. ―Colette Cann, Associate Dean and Professor in International and Multicultural Education School of Education, University of San Francisco, USA This important text about intergroup dialogue decenters U.S. and eurocentric epistemologies of race and decolonization to focus on perspectives from the global south that are often marginal and underrepresented. To center healing and non-western ways of knowing as par