Within China, the discipline of American Studies spans a wide variety of concerns and preoccupations, reflecting its practical diversity in a transnational setting. Essays in this volume by close to forty scholars, the majority most of them based in mainland China, reflect on the past history and current teaching of American Studies within China, placing these in comparative perspectives. The nature of globalization, the transmission of ideas and practices across cultural boundaries, the formulation and meaning of identity in cross-national communications, constitute major themes in contemporary American Studies in China. For officials and commentators alike, the past, present, and future state of Sino-American relations are also an overriding preoccupation of China’s America-watchers. Overall, this collection allows the reader to sample and appreciate the state of the field of American Studies in today’s China.

At the time I was writing my dissertation I was a student at University of Cincinnati. University of Cincinnati has had an established program for teaching assistants since 1993; however, at the time I was there, I observed the need for the component for international teaching assistants in the program. That need guided my dissertation and this book. When revisiting the manuscript and preparing the publication, my aim was to offer something tangible and useful for higher education institutions. I currently work as part of a higher education insitution, too, and reading my dissertation after twelve years, I realize that communicative competence is still a valid topic, and that it can guide higher education institutions, researchers, as well as teaching and learning centers.

Published annually since 1985, the Handbook series provides a compendium of thorough and integrative literature reviews on a diverse array of topics of interest to the higher education scholarly and policy communities. Each chapter provides a comprehensive review of research findings on a selected topic, critiques the research literature in terms of its conceptual and methodological rigor, and sets forth an agenda for future research intended to advance knowledge on the chosen topic. The Handbook focuses on twelve general areas that encompass the salient dimensions of scholarly and policy inquiries undertaken in the international higher education community. Each annual volume contains manuscripts on such diverse topics as research on college students and faculty, governance and planning, advances in research methodology, economics and finance, and curriculum and instruction. The series is fortunate to have attracted annual contributions from distinguished scholars throughout the world. It encompasses: Comprehensive reviews of contemporary and emerging issues in postsecondary education - Hundreds of citations in a wide range of scholarly journals, including all leading journals of higher education and many other social science and professional journals - An indispensable resource for administrators, researchers and policymakers - Published annually since 1985.

An interdisciplinary, peer reviewed publication, Journal of International Students (Print ISSN 2162-3104 & Online ISSN 2166-3750) is a professional journal that publishes narrative, theoretical and empirically-based research articles, student reflections, and book reviews relevant to international students and their cross cultural experiences and understanding. Published quarterly, the Journal encourages the submission of manuscripts from around the world, and from a wide range of academic fields, including comparative education, international education, student affairs, linguistics, psychology, religion, sociology, business, social work, philosophy, and culture studies. For further information http: / /jistudents.org/

North American universities depend on international teaching assistants (ITAs) as a substantial part of the teaching labor force, which has led to the idea of an ‘ITA problem’, a deficiency model which is framed as a divergence between ITAs’ linguistic competence and undergraduates’ and their parents’ expectations. This outdated positioning of ITAs as deficient diminishes the invaluable role they play within the academy. This book argues instead for an approach to ITA which recognizes them as multilingual, skilled, migrant professionals who participate in and are discursively constructed through various participant frameworks, modalities and activities. The chapters in this volume offer state-of-the-art research into ITA using a variety of methods and approaches, and as such constitute a transdisciplinary perspective which argues for the importance of dialogue between research and practice.