POWER, JUSTICE, PRAXIS: LISTENING ACROSS

A Columbia Cross-Disciplinary Course.

“What is deep listening? Sama is a greeting from the secret ones inside the heart, a letter. The branches of your intelligence grow new leaves in the wind of this listening.” As these lines from 13th century Sufi poet Jalal al-Din Rumi suggest, deep listening is an act of profound humanity; it is an act of profound humility. It is also essential for intellectual development. In the 21st century university, how do we teach students in the art of listening – particularly, listening across differences of identity, politics, positionality and power? At a time when events on the national and international stage fracture interpersonal understanding and create environments of ideological isolation, how can justice be approached in our listening practices? How can listening be enacted toward a nuanced understanding of the other, not flattening or homogenizing, but rather, recognizing individuals and communities in their rich particularity, even when that listening may threaten one’s deeply held personal beliefs or community boundaries? This 4000 level mixed undergraduate/graduate course will examine how to conceptualize and enact listening from each of three disciplinary perspectives – narrative medicine, oral history, and social work, all fields in which the act of listening is central to our professional practices.

This class will introduce students to theoretically grounded listening practices incorporating attention to power, privilege, political difference, and personal identity (such as race/ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, religion), and give them opportunities to engage in practical listening labs which will be guided by junior faculty and teaching assistants from our disciplines. Case studies from current sociopolitical events and campus concerns regarding political polarization, freedom of speech, academic freedom and more will be utilized, and change year to year depending on the needs of the campus community. This course will examine interrelated questions informing listening and dialogue across difference such as: 1. How do we make the internal experience of listening visible and legible to others? 2. How do we know we have been listened to? What does the speaker ask of the listener? What are the relationships between witnessing, testimony, and listening? 3. How do we make sense of listening as an embodied experience? 4. What ways of communicating “count” as worthy of b