Course Title
Social Diversity Issues and Video Production

Teaching Team

Dr. Maurianne Adams, Heather Hackman, Jean Lorelle Paul, Dr. Ximena Zuniga

Curriculum

This course will incorporate the experiential process of making video documentaries into a pilot section of a general education "diversity" core course, Social Diversity in Education. The diversity component of the course brings theory concerning the dynamics of oppression to bear upon specific historical and social contexts of sexism, heterosexism, racism, anti-Semitism and ableism.

The course utilizes an experiential, student-centered approach with the following characteristics:

• balancing the emotional and cognitive components of learning about diversity;
• acknowledging and supporting the personal while illuminating the systemic;
• attending to social relations within the classroom and among members of diverse social groups;
• utilizing reflection and experience as tools for student-centered learning;
• and valuing awareness, personal growth, and change as outcomes of the learning process.

  The learning goals for this two-semester course include the following:

• personal awareness about sexism, heterosexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and ableism as they affect one's own life and life changes, and those of others;
• information about historical and social contexts for specific forms of oppression;
• conceptual understanding of the dynamics of oppression which cross-cut its various contexts;
• recognitions of critical incidents in real-world, real-time student experience;
• interpersonal, intergroup communication skills to generate across-group dialogue, to manage intergroup differences, and to intervene in critical instances of injustice and discrimination;
• and video documentary literacy and production skills to express diverse students' experiences of life on campus on in students' home or high school communities, and to create short video documentaries illustrative of those experiences.