Activating Racial Justice Through Narrative Negotiation

This innovative workshop was co-created by members of the Narrative Medicine (NMED) and Negotiation and Conflict Resolution (NECR) master’s programs, and funded through the Addressing Racism: A Call to Action for Higher Education initiative of the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.

Engaging in difficult conversations — particularly those about race, bias and oppression — often creates a dynamic of tension and conflict. This workshop offers a framework and strategies to help approach such conversations, providing tools to work toward activating racial justice. These tools are grounded in narrative competence, including understanding the helpfully mediating role of a narrative text, and developing an awareness of one’s own positionality as a reader and—by extension—as an individual in relation to others.

Audience: 10–15 SPS faculty (full- or part-time)

Format: Three, 90-minute sessions via Zoom

Dates: Tuesdays; September 28th, October 5th, and October 12th

Time: 5:30–7:00 p.m. ET

By participating in these workshops, participants will:

• Develop increased willingness and capacity to engage in challenging discussions—particularly concerning race—including sitting with discomfort.
• Learn and practice approaches to develop awareness of positionality—self and other, and context, e.g. classroom dynamics—to better address challenging situations.
• Develop awareness of the harm of not engaging/addressing these topics that sends the message that what has occurred is OK.
• Draw upon NMED and NECR tools/models to use in these difficult conversations.
• Work towards normalizing difficult conversations.

Space is limited to 15 participants.

This is a three-session workshop; please commit to attending all three 90-minute sessions.

RSVP to Derek McCracken (dsm2178 [[at]] columbia [[dot]] edu (dsm2178[at]columbia[dot]edu)) by Friday, September 24th.