Identity, Power & Vocation in Community

Instructor: Katherine Turpin, PhD

My best contact method is through my Iliff (rather than Canvas) email: kturpin@iliff.edu .

Course Synopsis

The six credit sequence of Identity, Power, and Vocation in Community (IPVC) cultivates students’ ability to engage in social and theological analysis 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' vocational paths. The course takes the perspective that this sort of analysis, engaged in community and supported with spiritual practices, 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.

Course Requirements and Evaluation (Winter):

1. Class Participation: Each module of the course has required readings, weekly intentional use of a spiritual grounding practice, class discussions and activities, and occasionally low-stakes written assignments. All of these combine to be counted as the "Participation" grade in the course, which is worth 75% of your grade. Part of that grade will be decided through self-evaluation, since your instructor is not able to see your efforts at home, your completion of readings, and other elements of your work in the class. Regular weekly postings and activities are generally graded completion/noncompletion with instructor feedback. Because the learning community of this course is dependent on the interactions of the students, I value timely participation.  Being consistently late on course discussions and weekly activities will adversely affect your participation grade. All weekly and low-stakes activities can be submitted during the week after their due date, after that they will be marked incomplete and receive no credit.
2. Participation in Gathering Days in the winter quarter.  Because this is 20% of instructional contact for the course, you technically cannot pass the class if you do not come to Gathering Days.  Exceptions to this policy are rare, require a doctor's excuse or other documentation of the reason for the absence, and the permission of the dean.
3.  A final critically integrative reflection paper at the end of each quarter. 25% of final grade. Each low-stakes and final writing assignment in the class will have a rubric for assessment available prior to the due date so that students can see what the evaluative structure is for the assignment. 

From the Masters Student Handbook: 

Because Identity, Power, and Vocation in Community depends on building an intentional community of learners to reach its learning outcomes, students will stay in the same section with the same instructor throughout the academic year. Students must pass all three consecutive quarters (Fall, Winter, and Spring) within a single academic year with the same instructor and cohort in order to complete the required credits for Identity, Power, and Vocation in Community (with passing at graduate level being a C or above). Exceptions to this policy for students with extenuating life circumstances may be approved by the Dean. Extenuating circumstances typically include a death of a loved one, an unforeseen medical emergency of the student or immediate family member, students with granted ADA accommodations, or other substantive changes.

Students may request to take this course pass/fail during the first week of the Fall quarter by emailing the instructor and do not need to provide a justification for their request. 

NOTE: Since this is the winter start section, Fall/Winter quarter are both happening in the Winter quarter, with the course being 4 instead of 2 credits.

Touchstone/Reflective Questions

These Touchstone are meant to help guide your integrative work throughout the work of multiple quarters. This class covers many materials, engages many perspectives, explores many worlds and angles. These questions invite you to delve more deeply into applications of the work of the class personally, spiritually, professionally/vocationally, and relationally.

Identity Questions: Who am I? To which communities do I belong, and to whom am I accountable?  What histories, ideologies, and institutional/material structures have contributed to where I am in the world? What stories, practices, rituals, sense of space/time, rhythms of life ground me and help me to make sense of my life, relationships, vocation, and the world around me? What are the particular strengths and constraints that my embodiment, personal history, community of origin, and social location contribute to my work in the world?  

Power Questions: What is going on in relational dynamics, institutional structures or policies, cultural values or practices that either impacts me particularly deeply or that I don’t notice or have to engage because of my social location? How are the patterns of life in the institutions and communities I participate in structured to build, share, and enact power justly? What would need to change for power to be a constructive rather than an oppressive force within my circles of influence? What are the stories, images, celebrations, relationships, and practices that provide strength and vision to sustain the work of my community? Am I participating in the unjust, coercive, or abusive use of power in my relationships with others? What helps me to be aware of and to exercise the power I have to respond faithfully within my given location at this point in time? 

Vocation Questions: What shared visions of life call me to move and act in the world? Who and how do they call me into being? What current situations, experiences of suffering, visions of wholeness, or groups of people particularly call to me and demand my response? What is the work that I must do to honor my soul’s deepest longings and the world’s deep needs?  What can I not not do in the world and still remain true to myself and my community? Does the work I feel called to integrate my past experience and call me forward into a viable future in relationship with those communities to whom I am accountable? How will I navigate the institutional structures and material realities that present themselves as paths of least resistance while remaining true to my sense of calling and accountable to my communities and our core values? When will I know that a particular season of calling in my life has come to an end, and when it is time to make a transition in my situation?

Community Questions: How is my sense of calling affirmed, challenged or supported by a community of accountability? Who are the friends, mentors, and wise elders to whom I turn to discern the next right steps in my vocational path? How do I listen to and learn from peoples and communities that are different from me, especially those who experience marginalization/oppression where I experience privilege/dominant status? Which communities do I feel called to work to cultivate and sustain as a part of my vocation? Which communities of trust do I seek for support to sustain my work in the world? How do I help shape communities that hold space for others to do the work to which they feel called?

All of the common readings can be found in the Canvas course site.

In addition, each student will choose one of the following texts to read by week seven.  Each is a biography or memoir of a person who has worked for a good while in social justice or ministerial leadership. We will be reading them in light of the touchstone questions for this class, asking questions of identity, power, vocation, and community, as well as how they lived out a life seeking community and justice while navigating institutions and existing power structures. For now, research these a little bit and choose one that speaks to you. You will both be having a paired conversation with a classmate about your literary partner and writing a letter to them.  Here are the choices:

• Don D'Emilio,  Forgotten Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
• Eboo Patel, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, in the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation
• Bryan Stephenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
• John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
• Marian Wright Edelman, Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors
• Mab Segrest, Memoir of a Race Traitor: Fighting Racism in the American South
• Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith (note, this is actually a memoir about leaving the ministry, so a little different than the others, but definitely thinking about institutional life and vocation in powerful ways)