SPEC 17
Emergent Strategy: Creating Systemic Change from Small to Large Winter 2020

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Class Details

Albert Einstein said “we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them,” encouraging us to rethink our assumptions and process for instigating change. But what kind of thinking and process should we use to solve our problems? This course will use the guiding principles of adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy to explore how to build the community and the economic, political, social, and interpersonal systems that we want to see in the world. We need not confine ourselves, in defeat, to incremental lifestyle changes because we feel we do not have the power to incite large scale change; rather we will work to embody, through a varied practice of reflection, movement work, conversation, facilitation, and peer-to-peer dialogue and mediation, the world we want to construct. How can we institutionalize justice and sustainability in the place of institutional racism, heteropatriarchy, xenophobia, exploitation etc.? We will explore how systems of oppression shape and intersect with daily habits and community structures even as we build movements to overcome these oppressive systems. For instance how can we challenge our inclination for hierarchical and majority-rules group governance, or how do we create and maintain boundaries for working relationships that effectively disrupt implicit biases and inherent power imbalances? The course will meet frequently with practitioners, educators, and researchers who are doing movement building work. Students will learn facilitation skills and use systems theory throughout course discussions in order to address challenging topics that they identify. This course relies on numerous perspectives from readings, audio stories, and in-person/video conversations with movement builders from on campus and across the Northeast. Adjunct Instructor Bio: Caroline Bruno is the Sustainability Coordinator at the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives and works to incite and connect conversations across campus about enacting social change, meaningful community involvement, environmental justice and sustainability.
The Class: Format: lecture
Limit: 15
Grading: pass/fail only
Requirements/Evaluation: the course will focus heavily on personal reflection and active participation, including a final reflection paper and an outline for a teach-in/session created by the class to be presented at Claiming Williams Day 2020 and other points throughout the end of Winter Study and/or Spring Semester
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: students will be asked to write 1-2 paragraphs explaining their interest in the course; preference will go to students demonstrating passion and nuanced thinking related to the subject matter
Materials/Lab Fee: cost of books

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