Description:

This talk, brought to you by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Official Institute of Diversity and Inclusion, This talk will discuss what "BMHR Across Intercultural Experiences" entails and will attempt to answer the following questions: How may one foster EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) and democracy when
national and international laws and human dignity are highjacked by econotechnocracy and cultural imperialism? How can the global leadership of the modern political and intellectual elite work on moving away from manipulative and contentious politics, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism toward a culture of existential justice, existential literacy, and human dignity? How would one theoretically and practically use the 5 themes discussed by BMHR’s approach: (1. Issues across EDI & EDIHD (equity, diversity, inclusion, and human dignity) discourses and the Way Forward; 2. Social Justice & Existential Justice; 3. Global Citizenship & Global Intercultural Citizenship; 4. Multiculturality/Multilingualism and Interculturality; 5. Sociolinguistics & Existential Sociolinguistics) in their present and future teaching and research? Professor Balosa proposes a new orientation within which the role of global political, legal, and intellectual leadership should articulate strategies that foster and cement BMHR by promoting the culture of existential justice, existential literacy, intercultural competence, and human dignity. That suggests a leadership that demonstrates its commitment to a critical radical transformation of ideologies and politics, of what Gabriel Marcel calls "a set of images and ready-made ideas, the substitution of right for might, and values dangerously define as universals" but that don't reflect the reality or experience at hand (Marcel, 1954, pp. 1, 2).

Dr. Balosa received his Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture from the University of
Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in 2020. He received his Ms. TESOL from the University of Pennsylvania (UPENN) in 2003 and his MA. Ed. from LaSalle University in 2007.