SPI 2008 course descriptions
- Session I - May 5-13
- Session II - May 15-23
- Session III - May 27 -June 4
- Session IV - June 9-13 (special five day courses)
PLEASE NOTE: All syllabi are in pdf format. If you have difficulty downloading the syllabi, email Valerie Helbert at spi@emu.edu. Some syllabi include information on introductory readings and assignments that are to be completed prior to class.
SESSION I: May 5-13
Introduction to Conflict Transformation
Gloria Rhodes
(This course is for training only)
Designed as a broad introduction to the field, this course will familiarize participants with various theoretical understandings of conflict. The transformational framework will be explored in depth and compared with other schools of thought in the field. To this end, participants will explore conflict at a personal, communal, national, and international level. They will be encouraged to critically examine their underlying assumptions and beliefs about conflict and their patterns of response to conflict. Participants will also be given an opportunity to examine and critique the underlying biases and assumptions in the conflict resolution models and theories presented throughout the course with a primary objective being to make the materials culturally relevant for each participant. An interdisciplinary approach, which draws on both social science and spiritual perspectives, will be used to explore conflict and communication styles, the role of power, systemic analysis, the dynamics of change, and intervention in interpersonal, organizational, and intergroup conflicts. Participants will be expected to engage in discussions, role-plays, exercises, and case studies.
View Syllabus (Pre-course assignment included), Introductory Reading 1 and Reading 2
Analysis: Understanding Conflict
Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah
(This course satisfies a core course requirement for MA students)
This course draws from social science disciplines to review the broad interdisciplinary theoretical bases for conflict transformation. The course focuses on the initial analysis as a necessary first step toward transformative intervention in any conflict. Participants will build a vocabulary for talking analytically about conflicts and conflict intervention strategies. They will also practice using various tools to analyze conflicts at different levels of social organization.
View Syllabus (Pre-course assignment included)
Restorative Justice: the Promise, the Challenge
Howard Zehr & Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz
This course provides a critical examination of the fundamental principles and practices of restorative justice. It provides a unique opportunity to explore not only the promise of, but also the challenge to the restorative justice field in a variety of contexts. The course explores the needs and roles of key “stakeholders”–victims, offenders, communities, and justice systems–outlines the basic principles and values of restoration, and introduces some of the primary models of practice. It also addresses the “challenges” to restorative justice–the dangers and the pitfalls–as well as possible strategies to help prevent restorative justice from failing to live up to its promise. The central starting point for the course is the Western legal or criminal justice system and the problem of crime. However, attention is also given to applications in and lessons from other contexts. Of particular interest is the contribution of traditional or indigenous approaches to justice.
View Syllabus (Pre-course readings included)
Faith-based Peacebuilding: Beyond Realpolitik and Secularism
Roy Hange
Please Note: Due to a professional situation, David Steele will be unable to teach the "Trumping Realpolitik" course at SPI this summer. In its place we have substituted a course with a similar design that will be facilitated by Roy Hange. If you have chosen "Faith-Based Conflict Transformation" as a first or second choice, you will now be signed up for "Faith-Based Peacebuilding" with Roy Hange. If you read the course description and want to change your course choices, please contact Valerie Helbert at helbertv@emu.edu with your new first and second choices. Our apologies for this inconvenience.
In a post Cold War and post September 11 context, this course will equip participants to form their own faith identities as peacemakers, to develop capacity in building structures of interfaith engagement, and to become actors in religious diplomacy at various levels. This course will specifically explore the sources of conflict and resources for peacebuilding in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, reveal how religious identity functions in conflict settings, present models for reading the stages of religious conflict, discuss ways religious leaders and actors have been positive actors in conflict transformation, and engage participants in building a vision for faith-based conflict transformation in their contexts.
View Syllabus (Pre-course readings included)
Women, Leadership, & Peacebuilding
Jeanette Rodriguez
This course will identify the multiple roles that women play in the process of peacebuilding, examining strategies for empowering women to continue and expand their leadership roles based on a shared analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of women’s peacebuilding capacity. Using case studies of women’s leadership for peacebuilding at the local and global levels, the course will provide up-to-date knowledge of the significant achievements made in the last five years on this issue. The course will also provide opportunity to explore ways to address the challenges to women’s roles in peacebuilding and will analyze the next steps for moving the agenda forward.
View Syllabus (Pre-course assignment included)
SESSION II: May 15-23
The Moral Imagination: Building the Art and Soul of Peacebuilding
John Paul Lederach & Herm
Weaver
This course will journey into seldom traveled terrains of peacebuilding: How do people break out of cycles of violence while still facing everything that produces them? How does social change get sparked and then sustained? What makes unexpected shifts that create constructive movement in relationships? These kinds of questions suggest that peacebuilding may ultimately find its deepest roots in artistic and spiritual processes. Therefore, this course will not focus directly on peacebuilding techniques, approaches or skills, but will be a time for reflection, tapping creative sources and touching the deeper soul of peacebuilding work. Through a variety of interactive exercises, intellectual inquiries, and space for listening to the inner voice, the course will provide a platform for exploring the art of inciting the moral imagination.
View Syllabus (Preparation assignment included)
Trauma Awareness & Transformation
Nancy Good Sider
& Cheryl Talley
Combining theory and experiential learning, this course is designed to provide persons with a thorough overview of trauma, trauma healing, and transformation. Participants will explore the social-psychological-physical-spiritual processes of responding to deep personal loss, pain, and suffering in settings of protracted, traumatic conflict, as well as examine recently developed healing approaches of individuals and communities moving from violence to trauma healing and transformation. This course highlights the importance of integrating the study of trauma into the field of peace-building, since unhealed trauma often continues the cycle of violence.
View Syllabus (Pre-course readings included)
Philosophy and Praxis of Reconciliation
Hizkias Assefa
This course will explore the underlying philosophical bases and practice of reconciliation. Of particular interest will be the different ways in which forgiveness and reconciliation is understood in spiritual, social, and political terms, as well as how it is perceived from different cultural and religious traditions. Participants will engage in extensive personal reflection and group simulation designed to illuminate the possibilities and complexities of working toward forgiveness and reconciliation in deeply divided societies.
View Syllabus (Pre-course reading included) and Introductory Reading
Strategic Nonviolence: Advocacy & Activism
Lisa Schirch
Strategic advocacy is an essential element in peacebuilding. Both violence and nonviolent advocacy are strategies to balance power and raise awareness in conflicts that are not ready for verbal forms of negotiation, mediation, or dialogue. They both intensify conflict to “force” or persuade people to change their behavior. Violence usually spirals into a cycle and creates new victims. Waging conflict nonviolently through advocacy and activism ideally ripens the conditions for transforming relationships and structures while stopping the cycle of direct and structural violence. This class identifies the ways non-adversarial, relationship-based advocacy can complement other peacebuilding activities. The course introduces the philosophy of nonviolence and examines the strategy and methods of activism and advocacy. Participants will learn to create nonviolent power, identify tactics, and develop plans for nonviolent advocacy campaigns.
View Syllabus (Pre-course reading included)
Conflict Sensitive Development & Peacebuilding
Bill Lowrey & Abikök Riak
This course will explore the impact of community, national, and global conflicts on humanitarian assistance and development projects and the corresponding impacts, including negative effects, that humanitarian assistance and development programs can have on the conflict context. The class will develop a framework for durable peace and will explore available frameworks in the field of study. Approaches and appropriate tools will be surveyed that can contribute toward integrating peacebuilding with development through the project cycle, including context assessment, project design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Participants will gain a working knowledge of the various approaches, as well as specific skills and tools they can take back to their own contexts.
View Syllabus (Pre-course assignment included), Introductory Reading 1 and Reading 2
Theory: Frameworks for Conflict Transformation
Jayne Docherty & Sam Rizk
(Prerequisite: Six hours of courses, including Analysis)
This course assumes that everyone involved in a conflict—including third party interveners—holds a variety of tacit theories and that these impact the behavior and choices of everyone involved. By examining their own theories and drawing upon academic theories from a wide variety of disciplines, students will develop greater awareness of theories and their impact on conflict transformation practice.
View Syllabus (Pre-course assignments included)
SESSION III: May 27-June 4
Systems Approach to Organizational Conflict
David Brubaker & Roxy Allen
This course will encourage participants to see conflict in organizations as a function of the relationship systems within the organization. Participants will first examine their own family of origin through the lens of family systems theory, and then adapt that theoretical framework to assess an organization and its conflict dynamics. This will be a highly interactive course, utilizing case study and role-play methodology and concluding with the opportunity to study an actual organization (for those taking the course for credit).
View Syllabus (Required texts noted; please purchase prior to class)
Qualitative Research for Social Change
Mark Chupp
(This course satisfies a core course requirement for MA students)
Through field exercises and case studies from the US and other countries, this course will introduce participants to the field of qualitative research and provide training in specific methods. Based on an overview of theoretical perspectives on action research, participants will gain knowledge of diverse qualitative research strategies and methods. The course will examine the role of the researcher and his or her relationship to the community as it affects collection and analysis and the art of interpretation. Emphasis will be on ethnographic and participatory methods that promote social change. Newer positive change approaches to research, such as appreciative inquiry, will also be introduced. Participants will reflect on how these skills and methods can be transferred to other cultures and then have an opportunity to design their own participatory research projects for application in their home communities.
View Syllabus (Pre-course readings included)
Designing Learner Centered Trainings for Conflict Transformation
Robb Davis
This course will examine principles and practices of learner-centered design for those designing and facilitating training/education for conflict transformation. The course will focus on design of training and education events using principles of dialogue education. Participants will use a “seven steps of planning” framework for designing “learner-centered” tasks. The framework accounts for different learning styles and considers the varied purposes of learning tasks. Participants will examine the power of group-based learning to bring about behavior change. They will also develop a simple evaluation format that considers the concepts of learning, transfer, and impact as outcomes of learning. Participants will work on designs they plan to use in their work and must come to the class with a design idea to work on. The class is built upon concepts and practice developed by Jane Vella and focuses more on design practice than on learning theory.
View Syllabus (Pre-course assignment included) and Introductory Reading
Practice: Skills for Conflict Transformation
Nancy Good Sider
(This course satisfies a core course requirement for MA students)
This course focuses on essential skills and knowledge for facilitating conflict transformation in interpersonal and group settings. No matter what the level of peacebuilding work, effective practice relies on self-awareness and respecting others. The course examines practical skills such as listening, getting beyond posturing, issue identification, working with commonalities, problem-solving, group facilitation, methods for structuring conversation in group settings, and awareness of the impact of self on others. Special attention will be given to exploring the mediator’s cross-cultural assumptions and considering differences in the development of applications in diverse settings.
View Syllabus (Pre-course readings included)
Multi-Party Problems: Negotiations, Conflict Resolution & Consensus Building
David Anderson Hooker
(Classroom or practical exposure to negotiation, conflict analysis, or mediation recommended)
This course is an intensive look at the concepts and practices of consensus building, negotiation, and dispute resolution in the multi-party context. While many theories and practices of conflict analysis and negotiation applicable to interpersonal disputes are also applicable to situations involving multiple parties, there are additional skills and refinements required for successful implementation of multi-party processes. In the presence of alliances, uneven bargaining power, illegitimate parties, and threats of violence, most public policy disputes are resolved in informal negotiation settings. This course will utilize role plays, lectures, and case studies to identify and develop the necessary skills.
View Syllabus (Pre-course reading included) and Introductory Reading
Identity & Conflict Transformation
Barry Hart & Gopar Tapkida
This course will provide participants an opportunity to explore the literature and their own experiences related to identity, ethnic identity, ethnocentrism and nationalism, and acts of terrorism, in an attempt to understand the power of identity, especially in the midst of violent situations. Course participants, through case studies and class discussion, will examine how identity is formed historically, culturally, religiously, psychologically, sociologically and politically. Religious and identity-based conflicts, whether communal, national or international, will be analyzed and participants will look at the ways and means in which these conflicts might be transformed. Additionally, trauma related to humiliation and other factors concerned with identity threat and manipulation will be explored.
Eastern Mennonite Seminary, the graduate theological school at EMU, will offer the following courses during Session III of SPI 2008: Ethics and Nonviolence: Sermon on the Mount (May 27 - June 6, 2008) This course focuses on the teachings of Jesus that have reached across many cultures with a strong witness against violence. The Sermon on the Mount is foundational for understanding the core of Jesus's ethical teaching and practice. Ministering in Times of Trauma (May 27-31, 2008) This course examines the physiological, psychological, spiritual, and social impact of trauma. It explores how the Christian community with its transforming practices of truth-telling, forgiveness, reconciliation, restorative justice, and peacebuilding can lead to the shalom of God's kingdom. Register online at: http://www.emu.edu/seminary/part-time_app.html |
SESSION IV: June 9-13
Using Media to Promote Peace
Lisa Schirch & Vladimir Bratic
This course will examine the role of media in violent conflicts and peacebuilding. The use of media in times of conflict is initially examined in propaganda studies. More recently, media has been used as a tool for peacebuilding by utilizing mass communication channels and techniques to advance the peaceful resolution of violent conflict. This course will help participants learn practical skills for promoting messages about peace and peacebuilding to wider audiences. The course begins with basic lessons of social marketing, strategic communication planning, effective story-telling, and message development. Participants will discover how to use the media to engage and transform people and their perceptions of conflict. This course will equip participants with basic analytical skills to assess how to strategically use the media most effectively.
View Syllabus and Introductory Reading (Additional pre-course readings noted in syllabus)
Peace Processes: Multi-Track Approaches
Catherine Barnes
(This course is aimed at people familiar with armed conflict / peace building / international relations)
This course will address many of the dilemmas in developing and sustaining negotiated processes to end armed conflict and make the transition to durable peace. We will explore aspects of process design, including how the conflict is framed, who gets to be involved, the way issues are addressed, and the implications for both the process and the outcomes. We will examine issues around getting a talks process started; challenges at different phases in the negotiations; negotiation theory and practice; mediation roles and functions; and common tasks in the post-settlement phase for implementing the agreements and consolidating peace. We will devote special attention to processes that enable public participation in peacemaking, and how these interact with the processes surrounding official political negotiations. We will use case studies, group exercises, simulations and discussion of specific dilemmas participants have encountered in their own work.
View Syllabus (Pre-course readings and assignment included)
Design, Monitoring & Evaluation for Peacebuilding
Reina Neufeldt & Mark Rogers
This is an introductory design, monitoring and evaluation (DM&E) course for peacebuilding practitioners and professionals. It assumes that participants are already familiar with the theory and practice of peacebuilding but not DM&E. The course approaches DM&E from a learning perspective and introduces theories of change, indicators, monitoring, evaluation design, and tools for reflective practice. Its objectives are to enable participants to design better projects, to monitor and learn from those projects more regularly and effectively, and to enable participants to engage with final evaluations more thoroughly. The course design includes mini-lectures, experiential learning exercises and practical case applications.
Building Communities: Social, Economic, & Spiritual Development
David Anderson Hooker
This course will focus on the three pillars of community: its human, physical/environmental, and spiritual dimensions. Using the Asset Based Community Development approach to assessing communities, participants will look at North American case studies of community development which show both positive and negative examples of development. Efforts will be made to identify a local/regional community development project which participants will visit and evaluate. International participants should come prepared with case studies of community development projects with which they are familiar to present and compare with projects in North America.
Coming to the Table
Amy Potter
(This course is for training only)
Coming to the Table is an effort to involve direct descendants of slavery - black and white - in exploring their unique role in addressing the legacy of US slavery. This initiative was inspired by Martin Luther King’s dream for a beloved community where the “sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.” This workshop will be an experience of coming to the table to address a significant American conflict and to work on transcending the separation that has resulted from this painful past in order to create a legacy of connection for future generations. We will explore theories and practices that assist this journey of truth and reconciliation as well as get input from those who are on the journey.
Real World Restorative Justice: What Are We Learning From "the Field?"
Howard Zehr
(This course is a one-credit hour course offered June 12-13 only)
Over the past year, the “Koru Project” has been seeking to mine the wisdom and learning from graduates of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding who are applying restorative justice in their work. The purpose is to feed back into teaching and practice what our alumni have learned about restorative justice and to share those insights with others working in the field. The project will culminate in a gathering of these RJ practitioners during the 4th session of SPI. Some of these alumni-practitioners will stay on to share their learnings and to help lead this two-day advanced restorative justice course.
