Meeting the Other: An Intercultural Approach to Dutch Culture and Society

Course goals

Students gain insight in auto and hetero representations of contemporary Dutch culture and society.
Students develop an appreciation for the complexity of the concept of (national) culture.
Students gain insight in Dutch (cultural) discourses on contemporary social and political issues.
Students develop competences in intercultural collaboration and in reflecting on intercultural interaction.

Content

In the international classroom, we meet the Other and experience the challenges of intercultural understanding. This course invites both international and local students to reflect on Dutch culture and society: international students will gain an understanding of a world new to them, local students will acquire a new perspective on a world they consider familiar; together, students in the class will reflect on a world they share. 

In the course, we will first familiarize ourselves with a few relevant notions in intercultural communication, including the notion of (national) culture. We will discuss your own starting position and discuss whether, when and how we consider national identity a personal identity marker? Our next step is to explore international representations of the Netherlands. Which issues in Dutch culture and society today resonate abroad, and which hetero-images of the Netherlands and of the Dutch exist abroad? We will also consider how such images are communicated and how can they be studied and interpreted. Following, we will reverse the perspective and consider how the Dutch view themselves and how 'Dutch identity' plays out in the diversity of contemporary Dutch society. Is the international reputation of being 'tolerant' still confirmed domestically? We will also consider how Dutch culture can be presented to an international audience; the handbook in this course will be our starting point to consider discursive strategies in this type of communication across cultures.

Working on two projects in two different, heterogeneous teams, students will develop competences in intercultural communication in practice. Reflecting on the group process is a relevant part of such intercultural collaboration. 

Additional information

This course is the first course in the Interdisciplinary Minor Intercultural Communication.

As the Minor ICC is bilingual (Dutch and English), students may opt to write the (individual) exam in Dutch as well.