IST1001-1-SP14 - Identity, Power and Difference

2 credits
Mondays 6 pm - 8 pm

Instructors
Felicia George
fgeorge@iliff.edu

R.J. Hernández-Díaz
rhernandez-diaz@iliff.edu

Course Description
Identity, Power, and Difference cultivates students’ ability to engage in social and theological analysis, particularly about social structures, ideologies, and embodied practices that lead to domination or oppression. It facilitates critical thinking about social locations, power and privilege, and what effect these have on students' professional and vocational contexts (as pastors, ministers, educators, and religious and non-profit community leaders). The course takes the perspective that this sort of analysis is crucial to serving effectively in today’s complex social environment. It encourages students to deepen their commitment to dismantling privilege and oppression at individual, institutional, and societal levels. It also seeks to help students move within their varied levels of awareness about matters of power and difference to action.

This course embodies Iliff’s core commitments to respect difference and foster just relationships both in this context and beyond the school.

Required Texts

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing . London; New York: Penguin Books, 1972.

All other required texts are available in pdf format on Canvas.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, the student will by able to:

• Critically identify their social location and its shifting, contingent nature; move from individualistic to structural conceptualizations of the nature of identity, power and difference.
• Consider the ways in which social structures, systems, and institutions (impersonal forces) are real and have real effects on human bodies; interrogate how we exercise power through our entanglements in a web of oppression and privilege.
• Deploy theological, personal, and social tools to recognize and respond to the dynamics of privilege, oppression, and power playing out intrapersonally, interpersonally, in ministry/work contexts, and in the larger world.
• Grapple with what it means to engage this analysis and action as life-long commitment to effectively and intentionally implement the work of justice and peace.
• Struggle with the demands of being in solidarity/allyship across multiple axes of difference in various contexts of power and privilege in which we are connected historically and communally.

Degree Learning Goals

MDiv Degree Learning Goals supported by this class

1. Demonstrate personal and professional self-awareness and emerging competency in characteristic practices of religious leadership

4.1 Articulate a vision for increased social justice in relationships, communities, institutions, and systems and structures of power

4.3   Demonstrate an awareness of the importance of social location (race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability/disability, etc.) for self-understanding and professional practice

4.4   Complete a power analysis of systems and relationships and make strategic decisions for how one intervenes as a religious leader

MAPSC Degree Learning Goal supported by this class

1. Students will identify and critically evaluate the ways in which their personal, religious, and cultural experience, along with their activities in pastoral and spiritual care, shape their theology, moral orientation, and vocational formation.

MASC Degree Learning Goal supported by this class

1. Students will demonstrate personal and professional self awareness, including strategies for continued spiritual development and self-care, an awareness of the importance of social location for self-understanding and professional practice, and an ability to clearly interpret one’s beliefs and behavior to the community one serves.

Attendance and Participation

You are required to attend all class sessions unless there is a medical reason or a family emergency.

All course readings should be completed before the class on which they are due. Please bring relevant texts or articles to class.

Attendance counts for 10% of your grade. You get 1 point deducted for every class you miss. However, after two absences, you will likely fail the class. We do appreciate it if you let us know us before class that you anticipate being absent. 

Reading Analysis

In weeks 2-9, you are required to submit a 1-2 page, critical reading analysis. Your analysis should concisely state the thesis/main argument of each of the readings in your own words, as well as a few important/significant points of the reading that resonate with the theme of the week and your own theological construction. This exercise will deepen our analysis of the each session's topic and facilitate our in-class discussion.

Reading Analysis

In weeks 2-9, you are required to submit a 1-2 page, critical reading analysis. Your analysis should concisely state the thesis/main argument of each of the readings in your own words, as well as a few important/significant points of the reading that resonate with the theme of the week and your own theological construction. This exercise will deepen our analysis of the each session's topic and facilitate our in-class discussion.

Course Assignment Part 1: Critical Family Genealogy

Brief Description

The assignments for the quarter are one assignment in two parts, essentially a first draft and a final draft of a critical, personal reflection paper on family genealogy, focusing on the themes of the course: identity, power and difference.

As you are researching and drafting your family genealogy, decide on a classmate who will review your first draft for gaps, questions, and constructive criticism.  Select a partner on Canvas using the Peer Review Selection Collaboration. The role of the peer is to review the draft as objectively as possible and to listen for questions that arise; provide constructive feedback where you find inconsistencies and/or lack of clarity, and to push your colleague in places where it appears they are holding back or choosing not to engage fully.  The class following the posting, time will be set aside for pairs to discuss the review. 

Due Dates

Your initial draft, which you will submit on Canvas by the end of the 5th week of class, will be reviewed by your instructors and your peer reviewer.

1st Draft: Due by the 5th week of class, 4-5 pages. Details about submission process for papers to be decided.

We will spend part of our 6th session together providing each other feedback in class. These comments/suggestions should be incorporated or at least addressed in the final draft, which is due before the last class session.

More Detailed Description

Think back, explore, and research at least two generations back in your family – grandparents, parents, you. Follow one or more ancestral line. As you read the questions below, you will find that some apply to you while other don't; some you might have solid data about and some might be your guesses. If you are adopted, you may choose to work on your immediate family and their ancestry, or what you may know about your biological lineage. These are questions just to get you started thinking and questioning your family biography in a more in-depth and critical way.

This assignment is not meant merely a telling of your family story. It is a critical biographical genealogy. Even though it is brief, we intend for you to do some critical analysis, making larger socio-political and historical connections with your family history. One of the objectives of the assignment is to get you to think about how you were shaped by larger systems of identity, power, and difference, how those systems both promote and prevent the ways you see yourself and your leadership in the world today. Your paper should analyze and reflect on these connections, as well as telling us something about your family history.

Molding the assignment to your particular family situation and knowledge, respond to the following three areas (you do not have to respond to them sequentially, but you may) in 4-5 pages.

1. Describe your family history: See the questions below. But in general terms describe: from where and whom do you come? What do you know, and what do you not know?
2. Reflect on your process: What was it like to learn about and explore this history? What personal feelings and thoughts did you observe?
3. Connect to class themes: How, specifically, do the readings and discussions relate to your history and observations? Make explicit reference (parenthetical citation style is acceptable) to the course materials.

Possible questions for exploration include:

• How many generations ago did your family come to the United States? Did your ancestors come to what is now the US from a different place? If so, what were the circumstances of their arrival? Did they come voluntarily, as slaves, indentured servants, refugees, or were they part of a conquered people? Is it possible for you to retrieve this information? Why or why not?
• If your ancestors were immigrants, do you know where they first settled and why they settled there? How do you know (or not know)?
• If you have ancestors indigenous to this country, how and when did your ancestors’ homeland become part of the US? What do you know about this experience?
• What kind of work (paid or unpaid) did your ancestors do?
• What obstacles did your ancestors face: in finding work, in finding a place to live, in traveling, in school, in establishing a household?
• Were/when were your ancestors eligible for citizenship?
• How do you identify your ancestors racially? For you and/or what you know of your parents/grandparents, was race talked about?

** Please note: the syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructors.