Seminars

The last half of the 20th Century and the first decade of the 21st Century have brought drastic change to our ecological, economic, political, industrial/technological, and social landscapes. In America, we have been pressed to change and inspired to hope.

While events such as the 2008 & 2012 U.S. presidential elections, the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman court case, and the events that spurred the Black Lives Matter Movement have put the topic of race front & center in national discourse, we still seem to need more platforms on which to further develop our cultural competence in order to have more meaningful conversation and to strengthen our social institutions. How can the institution of education support a call to action to address some of today’s most pressing problems?

This course explores how we come to develop our racial identities and how our racial identities impact our position and relationships in our local communities and global society/ies – particularly in regard to our economic, social and political status. We will examine how the system of education and the process of schooling both influences and is influenced by race and racial identity. The course content and methodology seek to empower us to decide our individual and collective roles in influencing the attitudes, ideas, and behaviors that will determine the future of our planet.

We begin with a look at the historical background of race in America and proceed to examine the continuing consequences and conflict that this history has generated, particularly our inability to realize the educational goals of quality, equality, and democracy. We will investigate education as a representative and driving American institution. We will look at how we are educated in a variety of settings. What impact do race, class, gender, and other (but no less important) differences have on school and/or workplace experience?

We will look at race as a social construction and a tool for social organization. We will examine a wide range of representations of the significance of race along with how racial difference is manifested in our major institutions such as education, in personal narrative, popular culture and in everyday life. How are these representations bound up with our understanding of race and racial difference? How are our own identities and the ideas of others influenced by the history and representations of race? Through presentation, seminar discussion, theoretical critique, essay writing, and personal narrative, we will reveal, uncover and unpack these and other questions. We will look at how race relations and racism influence policies and procedures, laws, language, social conditioning, and moral codes or values. We will illuminate the American education system as both a tool for social reproduction and as a site for creating social justice.

This is an interactive, seminar-style course. We will use essay, short fiction, film, personal narrative, documentary, museums and lectures as learning activities. Much of our learning will come from our own experiences/interpretations. You will explore yours and others’ past and present experiences in relation to education, privilege, and marginalization, as well as your beliefs and assumptions about education, school, and schooling (curriculum, teachers, texts, and pedagogy). The use of narrative for understanding our own identities of privilege and marginalization, cross-cultural relationships, and paradigms for teaching and learning will be an important component of this course.