This course will examine feminist and critical intersectionality theories as an approach and framework for community change. It will emphasize understanding the role of power embedded in structures, how power manifests in privilege and oppression and in social patterns of inequality. Students will engage in learning frameworks identifying and analyzing injustice through a feminist and critical intersectional lens as well as developing skills to utilizing these frameworks in community change practice. Students will also use this lens to explore examples of feminist and critical intersectional change efforts in the US and globally.
Pathway Elective For
- Community Change (Host)
Objectives
- Understand the key ideas, historical changes, main theories, research, and core concepts of community change in social work, informed by feminist and intersectional perspectives (EPAS 2, 3).
- Recognize how positionalities intersect with systems of power and affect community change (EPAS 2, 3).
- Use feminist and intersectional assessment methods to guide planning, monitoring, and evaluating community change in various contexts (EPAS 2, 3, 7, 9).
- Design strategies to apply feminist and intersectional principles to various types of community change (EPAS 2, 3, 8).
- Examine and apply social work ethics to community change challenges, using feminist and intersectional perspectives (EPAS 1, 3).
- Demonstrate knowledge of how to apply feminist and intersectional approaches to community change (EPAS 2, 3, 8).
- Design, facilitate, and evaluate a popular education session in class or in the community (EPAS 2, 3, 8, 9).
Intensive Focus on Privilege, Oppression, Diversity and Social Justice (PODS)
This course integrates PODS content and skills with a special emphasis on the identification of theories, practice and/or policies that promote social justice, illuminate injustices and are consistent with scientific and professional knowledge. Through the use of a variety of instructional methods, this course will support students developing a vision of social justice, learn to recognize and reduce mechanisms that support oppression and injustice, work toward social justice processes, apply intersectionality and intercultural frameworks and strengthen critical consciousness, self-knowledge and self-awareness to facilitate PODS learning.