Peqod :: Classes - Columbia University Catalog of Classes

POWER, JUSTICE, PRAXIS: LISTENING ACROSS

A Columbia Cross-Disciplinary Course.

“What is deep listening?
Sama
is a greeting from the secret ones inside the heart, a letter. The branches of your intelligence grow new leaves in the wind of this listening.” As these lines from 13th century Sufi poet Jalal al-Din Rumi suggest, deep listening is an act of profound humanity; it is an act of profound humility. It is also essential for intellectual development. In the 21st century university, how do we teach students in the art of listening – particularly, listening across differences of identity, politics, positionality and power? At a time when events on the national and international stage fracture interpersonal understanding and create environments of ideological isolation, how can justice be approached in our listening practices? How can listening be enacted toward a nuanced understanding of the other, not flattening or homogenizing, but rather, recognizing individuals and communities in their rich particularity, even when that listening may threaten one’s deeply held personal beliefs or community boundaries? This 4000 level mixed undergraduate/graduate course will examine how to conceptualize and enact listening from each of three disciplinary perspectives – narrative medicine, oral history, and social work, all fields in which the act of listening is central to our professional practices.

This class will introduce students to theoretically grounded listening practices incorporating attention to power, privilege, political difference, and personal identity (such as race/ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, religion), and give them opportunities to engage in practical listening labs which will be guided by junior faculty and teaching assistants from our disciplines. Case studies from current sociopolitical events and campus concerns regarding political polarization, freedom of speech, academic freedom and more will be utilized, and change year to year depending on the needs of the campus community. This course will examine interrelated questions informing listening and dialogue across difference such as: 1. How do we make the internal experience of listening visible and legible to others? 2. How do we know we have been listened to? What does the speaker ask of the listener? What are the relationships between witnessing, testimony, and listening? 3. How do we make sense of listening as an embodied experience? 4. What ways of communicating “count” as worthy of b

T 10:10 a.m.-noon
3 points

Details

NMED GU4001

ILLNESS/DISABILITY NARRATIVES

R 12:10 p.m.-3 p.m.
4 points

Details

NMED PS5025

SELF & OTHER IN CLIN ENCOUNTER

M 6:10 p.m.-9 p.m.
Instructor: Craig Irvine
Info
4 points

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NMED PS5100

PRACTICUM: FACILITATING NARRATIVE MEDICI

PRACTICUM: FACILITATING W

R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
3 points

Details

NMED PS5110

NARRATIVE THERAPY

Whether alone with ourselves, or in close relationships with important people in our lives, dominant narratives shape our encounters by bringing certain aspects of our experience to the fore and marginalizing others. Narrative Therapy is a school of thought developed by Michael White, the Australian psychotherapist and social activist. Influenced by Social Constructionism and the writings of Michel Foucault (among others), White sought to understand the ways in which systems of power and control on the societal level shape our most intimate experiences. There is a price we pay for the hegemony of dominant narratives (as Foucault would say) as other aspects of our experience become marginalized and pushed out of awareness in this process. But by analyzing the dynamics by which certain narratives come to hold sway over us, and by considering what goes missing from our experience, Narrative Therapy seeks to undo this price by re-evaluating the stories we live by so that they can be more expansive and less limiting.

In this course we will look at the basic concepts and theoretical underpinnings of Narrative Therapy, and then begin to understand the essential techniques and areas of application of this important therapeutic school. This course does not train students to practice therapy. Our emphasis instead will be on developing ideas for ways in which the concepts and techniques introduced by Narrative Therapy can inform the practice of Narrative Medicine.

Questions we will address include:
● What can we learn from Narrative Therapy about the ways people structure stories about themselves, and how does this affect their relationship with their bodies, with illness and their conceptions of healing?
● What are the mechanisms by which dominant narratives from the social sphere are integrated into an individual’s self concept, and how does this then influence power relations in the clinical encounter?
● Theorists within Narrative Therapy strive to foster a non-hierarchical, non-expert stance in the clinical encounter. What are the possibilities and the challenges inherent in maintaining this?