- The Power and Limitations of Dialogue

Institution:

The Evergreen State College

Subject:

Description:

Faculty: Patrick Hill (history of philosophy, philosophy of community/dialogue, social history) Major areas of study include communication, social philosophy, religious studies and political economy. Class Standing: Sophomores or above; transfer students welcome. Prerequisites: One year of college-level course work in the humanities and/or social sciences. Training in mediation or conflict resolution is desirable. Faculty signature is required (see below). Faculty Signature: The instructor, believing that programs are too frequently chosen casually, is seeking a match between the students' interests/expectations and this curriculum. To that end, a set of preregistration materials has been prepared, which must be read prior toobtaining permission to register. To obtain those materials and then a faculty signature, students must contact Patrick Hill, (360) 867-6595 or hillp@evergreen. edu. Preregistration materials received by the Academic Fair, November 28, 2007, will be given priority. Qualified students will be accepted until the program fills. We will begin our study by exploring the power of dialogue, i. e. , the personal skills and the world views that might (were we ready, willing and able) maximize our own contributions to dialogue. Then we will explore the limitations of dialogue (and the attractiveness of alternatives to it) that are manifest in the deep gulfs in the United States and in world society, particularly between (1) the religious right and the secular left, and (2) Palestine and Israel. While a major focus of the program is on the more or less genuine dialogues of our times, these dialogues are being approached not as exhaustive studies of, e. g. , racism or anti-Semitism, but as case studies for understanding the power and limitations of dialogue. Each student will sense over the course of the program that he/she can internalize the dialogical skills as add-ons to one's already existing strategies of survival, and/or as the adoption of fundamentally de-polarizing habits of mind and heart now widely seen as vital to a pluralistic age in need of a more functional understanding of our differences. This program might well be described as a 10-week experiment in respectful or compassionate listening. Such an experiment is one of a few crucial prerequisites to both assessing the power and limitations of dialogue and to improving our own dialogical skills. The core of this program centers around the learning and the application of concepts central to the attempts to understand persons and groups quite different from us. This program demands an unusual amount of collaborative work, even by Evergreen's standards. Given the nature of the program, students will do a lot of work in small groups and be expected to participate in conversations with classmates and others with whom they would not normally converse. These expectations are crystallized in the program's very unusual Program Covenant. Total: 8, 12 or 16 credits. Enrollment: 15 daytime students, and 15 students from Evening and Weekend Studies. Program is preparatory for careers and future studies in mediation, conflict resolution, teaching, management, community organizing and most areas of the humanities and social sciences.

Credits:

12.00 - 16.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.evergreen.edu

Phone Number:

(360) 867-6170

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Quarter

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