Written for study abroad practitioners, this book introduces theoretical understandings of key study abroad terms including “the global/national,” “culture,” “native speaker,” “immersion,” and “host society.” Building theories on these notions with perspectives from cultural anthropology, political science, educational studies, linguistics, and narrative studies, it suggests ways to incorporate them in study abroad practices. Through attention to daily activities via the concept of immersion, it reframes study abroad not as an encounter with cultural others but as an occasion to analyze constructions of “differences” in daily life, backgrounded by structural arrangements.

“Doerr’s work makes a unique contribution to the international education scholarship by grouping together the key terms supporting the dominant discourse and putting them under the spotlight for a closer examination. For easy practical reference, the author chooses to focus on one term in each chapter. While using theories to expose the study abroad clichés, the author manages to keep her language simple and easy to understand.” • McGill Journal of Education

“This is an important contribution to the literature of international education. It deconstructs unexamined orthodoxies and proposes alternative ways of thinking about study abroad that could enrich the theoretical basis for this form of education, and lead practitioners to review what and how they teach.” • Michael Woolf, CAPA, The Global Education Network

“A necessary text… [this book] could go far in changing some of the fundamental questions about designing or carrying out study away programs.” • John J. Bodinger de Uriarte, Susquehanna University

Neriko Musha Doerr is an Assistant Professor at Ramapo College. Her publications include The Meaningful Inconsistencies: Bicultural Nationhood, Free Market, and Schooling in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Berghahn, 2009), The Romance of Crossing Borders: Studying and Volunteering Abroad (Berghahn, 2017, with Hannah Taïeb).