Dr.
Young Yun KimPosition: Professor
Education: Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1976
| Contact Information | |
email
: |
youngkim@ou.edu |
phone
: |
(405) 325 - 1587 |
office
: |
Burton 132 |
office hours
: |
T 2:00-3:00 PM W 5:30-6:00 PM |
Classes this semester:
COMM 6314-Historical Development of Communication Theory
Wed. 6:00-9:50 PM
Burton Hall, Rm. 125C
COMM 6413-Seminar in Interethnic Communication
Tue. 3:00-5:50 PM
Burton Hall, Rm. 125C
Academic Interests: Intercultural Communication, Adaptation, and Transformation; Association and Dissociation in Interethnic Communication
Young Yun Kim
is a professor in the Department of Communication at the
University of Oklahoma, Norman. She was born and raised in Seoul,
Korea, where she received her B.A. degree from Seoul National
University. In 1970, she moved to the United States and completed
her M.A. degree in speech communication at the University of
Hawaii in conjunction with the East-West Center. She continued her
studies in the US and completed a Ph.D. degree in communication
in1976 from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, with a
“best dissertation award.” Upon graduation, Prof. Kim taught at
Governors State University in Illinois until 1988, before moving
to the University of Oklahoma where she has helped to develop one
of the premier Intercultural Communication programs. Prof. Kim
teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and direct doctoral
theses mainly in the area of international, intercultural, and
interethnic/interracial communication.
Prof. Kim has published over 80 book chapters and refereed
articles in journals such as Communication Yearbook, Human
Communication Research, and International Journal of Intercultural
Relations. As author or editor, she has produced 12 intercultural
books including Interethnic Communication (Sage, 1986), Theories
in Intercultural Communication (co-edited with William Gudykunst,
Sage, 1988) Communication and Cross-Cultural Adaptation
(Multilingual Matters, 1988), Becoming Intercultural: An
Integrative Theory of Communication and Cross-Cultural Adaptation
(Sage, 2001), and Communicating with Strangers (4th ed.,
McGraw-Hill, 2003, with W. Gudykunst). She has served on the
editorial boards of Applied Communication Research, Communication
Research, Communication Theory, Human Communication Research,
International and Intercultural Communication Annual,
International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Journal of
Communication, and Journal of Intercultural Communication
Research.
Prof. Kim was named a Fellow of the International Communication
Association in 2002 for her contributions to communication
scholarship, and received in 2006 a Top Scholar Award for Lifetime
Achievement from the Division of Intercultural Communication of
the International Communication Association. She has played
leadership roles as Division Chair and on the board of directors
in the National Communication Association, International
Communication Association, and International Academy for
Intercultural Relations (of which she is a Charter & Founding
Fellow). She is also an active member of the International
Association of Language and Social Psychology. She has organized
many thematic symposia and panels, and has presented over 120
competitively selected and invited papers at national and
international academic conferences, with 12 of them receiving
“top-paper” awards. In addition, she has given 25 keynote lectures
at academic conferences and university colloquia, as well as over
50 public service lectures in various local communities and
organizations in the United States.
Prof. Kim began a scientific investigation of cross-cultural
adaptation of individuals from a communication perspective for her
doctoral thesis. Drawn to this inquiry prompted by a keen personal
interest in understanding the adaptive struggles and successes
that she and those around her were experiencing, her doctoral
thesis addressed these issues through a survey among Korean
immigrants in the Chicago area. She has since conducted original
studies among other immigrants, refugees, and ethnic minorities in
the United States, including Japanese, Mexicans, and Southeast
Asians, as well as American Indians. Her two-year study of
Indochinese refugees (1978-1980) in Illinois was sponsored by the
then US Department of Health and Human Services. The findings from
this study served as a knowledge base for the Department’s
deliberations in formulating policies for effective programs
designed to aid and facilitate the adaptation of the refugee
population throughout the US. Prof. Kim also has directed, and
collaborated in publications, with a number of doctoral theses
investigating cross-cultural adaptation in several different
cultural contexts. Among them are a study of adaptation patterns
of Malaysian students in the United States (with Ezhar Tamam),
Western and non-Western international university students in Japan
(with Masazumi Maruyama), Turkish employees of an American
military organization in Germany (with Vicki Braun), and Korean
business expatriates in the United States and their American
counterparts in South Korea (with Yang Soo Kim).
These and related research works have provided empirical grounding
for Prof. Kim’s continuous effort to build a comprehensive,
general theory of cross-cultural adaptation. The first full
articulation of her theory was presented in her book,
Communication and Cross-Cultural Adaptation: An Integrative Theory
(1988). Prof. Kim further refined and elaborated on this theory in
her more recent book, Becoming Intercultural: An Integrative
Theory of Communication and Cross-Cultural Adaptation (2001).
Built on the premise that an individual’s ability to communicate
in accordance to the norms and practices of the local culture lies
at the very heart of successful adaptation, Prof. Kim describes
cross-cultural adaptation as a process of dynamic unfolding of the
natural human tendency to struggle for an internal equilibrium in
the face of often adversarial environmental conditions. She argues
that, in the project of cross-cultural adaptation, we are also
embarking on a path of personal development, in which we stretch
ourselves out of the familiar and reach for a deepened and more
inclusive understanding of human conditions, including our own.
In recent years, Professor Kim has broadened her research domain
to include issues of ethnicity/race, ethnic identity, and
interethnic communication. She has been carrying out an original
research program examining various psychological, situational, and
macro-environmental factors and their relationships to associative
and dissociative behaviors and activities of individuals when
dealing with ethnically dissimilar others. Based on these research
activities, Prof. Kim has published a series of articles on a
systematic way of theorizing about the differing ways interethnic
communication plays out at the grassroots-level. In Theorizing
about Intercultural Communication (2005), she presented an initial
rendition of a formal theory entitled, “Association and
dissociation: A contextual theory of interethnic communication.”
Prof. Kim’s strong interest in these issues is a natural outgrowth
of her own personal evolution over the past three decades—from a
newcomer to American society striving for a successful adaptation,
to an insider who has come to care deeply about the continuing
national endeavor to move forward toward “a more perfect union.”
Updated 2/2009
Department of
Communication
University of Oklahoma
610 Elm Avenue, Room 132
Norman, OK 73019
(405) 325-1587