Ethnographing Gender Roles and Power in Intercultural Communication in Qatar

This ethnographic study examines how gender roles associated with male and female Qatari students in intercultural communication courses in a university in Qatar are negotiated between them and their two female instructors from the US and Greece. Our aim is to contribute towards the development of good practice related to the teaching of information exchange among group members who are not culturally alike, 1 by arguing that an efficient way of overcoming misunderstandings between instructors and students is to engage in a pedagogical approach, which we call �dialogical infotainment�. This serves the ultimate goal of sharing various types of power in order to sharpen our cultural sensitivity and subsequent tolerance and respect for each other�s gender role-related peculiarities. 2019, 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Authors� note: We thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors of the journal for their useful feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript. An early version was presented in 2016 at the IAFOR International Conference on Education in Hawai�i. Thanks also to Zahia Al-Marri for help with ethnographic work on Qatar; our students for valuable contributions; and Khaled Mhawish, Abdelazeem Ahmed, and Daniel Varisco for project support. We are grateful to the Qatar National Research Fund (JSREP Grant #4�009�6�003 to Irene). Views expressed are the sole responsibility of the authors.Scopu