Research Interests
Research Interests:
Intercultural Communication; Autoethnography; Transnationalism; Critical Communication Pedagogy
Manuscripts in Progress:
Zhang, T., Bao, H., & Daddaoui, B. (being polished for submission). Between Homes. On the Borders: A Collaborative Autoethnography on (un)Freedom and Identity.
- This is a collaborative work with two DKU UG students of Class of 2025. The manuscript is currently being prepared for submission to the journal of Communication Studies.
Zhang, T. (in progress). The GPT Doesn't Chat: AI and Critical Communication Pedagogy. (Manuscript under development)
Zhang, T. (in progress). Co-Constructing Shangri-la: Re-Reading Cultural Appreciation and Appropriation from the Songzanlin (松赞林寺) Spectacle.
Zhang, T. (in progress). Re-languaging Identity Beyond Borders: Building a Bridge Toward Understanding the "Them" Through Deconstructing the "Us".
Ethnographic Research Projects In Progress:
The Imagined and The Lived: Re/Naming, Tourism, and the Identity Performance of Shangri-La Tibetans.
- IRB approved & data collection completed in Summer 2024
A Comparative Study of the Linguistic Landscapes in Shanghai, Chengdu, and Kunming.
- IRB approved and data collection completed in summer 2025. Archival research and interviews are ongoing.
Citizens on the Borders: Intercultural Communication as Everyday Life.
- IRB approved and data collection of southern borders completed in summers 2026. Northern border fieldwork planned for summer 2027. Won DKU Faculty Scholarship and Travel Grant AY25/26.
Fellowships, Gifts & Other Supported Research
The purpose of the study is to achieve an ethnographic understanding of the lives of Chinese ethnic minorities on the southern and northern national borders in Yunnan and Dongbei. The primary methods are in-depth interviews and on-site participant observation.
This project is inspired by Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands Scholarship. Her signature work in Borderlands Scholarship is autohistoria-teorias, which explores self-knowledge, self-ignorance, and practices of knowing others.
The borderland is an interstitial and in-between space where people and cultures meet. It is also one of Zhang's research focuses on intercultural communication and identity studies. As a local of Yunnan, the fascinating ethnic diversity and minority cultures there continue to capture Zhang's scholarly curiosity. We have heard stories about border walls around the world that draw lines between the wealthy and the poor and between the powerful and the powerless. But we don’t know much about the border ecologies around here in the minority regions of China. Thus, this project aims to document the lives of citizens living on the borders as subjects who make meanings and effect changes, rather than being romanticized objects through media and tourist gazes. This project will contribute to the (critical) intercultural communication scholarship by exploring the lives and epistemologies of citizens across China-Southeast Asia and China-Korea/Russia/Mongolia national borders and margins of China. The collected data will result in peer-reviewed articles that prioritize the life stories and epistemologies of Chinese minorities. The project will also contribute to Zhang's new course planning, including, but not limited to, “Understanding China through the lenses of border ethnic minorities.”