Peacebuilding Communication
C401 Senior Seminar in
Communication and Culture
Fall 2009
Professor: Robert Ivie
E-mail: rivie@indiana.edu
Website: http://www.indiana.edu/~ivieweb/
Office Phone: (812) 855-5467
Office Address: 800 East Third St., Rm. 247
Office Hours: By Appointment
Class Meeting Time: Monday & Wednesday, 1:00 – 2:15 p.m.
Class Location: 800 East Third St., Room 203
Purpose and Format of the Seminar:
In this course, we explore
communication practices that engage conflict constructively and build
progressively toward a culture of peace.
We give special attention to humanizing language that resists demonizing
discourses of war, fosters political friendship, transcends the viewpoint of
war, and apprehends the perspectives of adversaries for the purpose of
encouraging collective self-reflection.
As a seminar, the course
emphasizes sustained discussion of assigned readings culminating in a term paper
that reports the student’s original research.
By definition, a seminar brings together a group of advanced students
studying with a professor, each of whom undertakes original research on the
designated topic and exchanges findings with other members of the seminar
through reports and discussion.
Accordingly, regular attendance, individual initiative, active
participation in class discussions, and written reports are expectations of the
seminar experience.
Assigned Books:
Robert L. Ivie,
Dissent from War (Bloomfield,
KT: Kumarian
Press, 2007)
John Paul Lederach,
The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
Discussion Units:
Note: Complete the assigned readings and any other
items indicated prior to the
designated class meeting.
1. Introduction to
Seminar
8/31 Michelle
Maiese, “Dehumanization”
Peace
Culture: find this reading in your C401 Oncourse Resource file
9/2 David Barash and Charles Webel, “The
Meanings of Peace”: C401 Oncourse Resource file
Robert Ivie, “Hierarchies of
Equality: Positive Peace in a Democratic
Idiom”: C401 Oncourse Resource File
2. Dissent from War
(Readings in Ivie)
9/7 War
is Easy (Chapter 1)
Walter
Wink, “Facing
the Myth of Redemptive Violence,” August 23, 2006.
9/9 A Question of
Conscience (Chapter 2)
9/14 A
Question of Redemption (Chapter 3)
9/16 A
Question of Communication (Chapter 4)
9/21 A
Question of Citizenship (Chapter 5)
9/23 Making War Difficult
(Chapter 6)
Ethics
of Peace: find this reading in your C401 Oncourse
Resource file
9/28;
9/30 Paper #1: Discussion of Research
Proposals on Peacebuilding Communication
3. The Moral
Imagination of Peacebuilding (Readings in Lederach)
10/5 The
Moral Imagination, (Chapters 1-3)
10/7 Peacebuilding (Chapters 4-6)
10/12 Metaphor
and the Aesthetics of Peacebuilding (Chapters 7-8)
10/14 Webwatching (Chapters 9-10)
10/19 Serendipity
and Deep Narrative (Chapters 11-12)
10/21 Creativity
and the Journey of Peacebuilding (Chapters 13-15)
10/26; 10/28 Paper #2:
Discussion of the Moral Imagination of Peacebuilding
Cases
4. Positive Peacebuilding as Symbolic Action
11/2 Robert Ivie, Constitutive Properties of Positive Peace: C401 Oncourse
Resource file
11/4 Johan Galtung, et al., Toward a Conflict Transformation Culture: C401 Resource File
11/9 Ellen Gorsevski, Rhetoric and Nonviolence: C401 Oncourse
Resource File
Barash & Webel,
Nonviolence: C401 Oncourse
Resource File
11/11 Spoma
Javanovic, Conflicted Identities and War: C401 Oncourse
Resource File
11/16 Lisa Schrich,
Ritual & Symbol in Peacebuilding: C401 Oncourse
Resource File
11/18 Douglas Fry, The Human Potential for Peace: C401 Oncourse
Resource File
Thanksgiving Recess
11/30; 12/2 Paper #3:
Discussion of Peacebuilding Research Papers
12/7; 12/9
Graded Assignments:
This
grade reflects my overall assessment of your regular attendance and your active
participation in class discussions, the quality of your contributions to class
discussions, and how well informed your contributions to discussion are by the
assigned readings. You should come to
each class with two or three prepared questions to generate thoughtful class discussion
of the assigned reading materials.
You
can miss two class meetings without consequence, assuming you do not miss a
class meeting in which we are scheduled to discuss one of your papers. After those two absences, regardless of the
reason for missing a class (sickness, family emergencies, etc. are not exceptions
to this rule), your attendance/discussion grade will be lowered one-third of a
grade for each absence (e.g., if your discussion grade for the semester is an
A, but you miss class five times over the semester, your grade for attendance
and discussion is reduced to a B because three of the five absences count
against the grade). You should plan to
attend all class meetings so that, should a medical or other unexpected event
keep you from attending class on a given day or two, you will not suffer the
consequence of a reduced grade.
Drawing
on ideas about positive peacebuilding communication found
in Dissent from War and other
assigned readings in the first four weeks of the course, write a proposal for a
term research project. This project
should reflect your interests as they engage the ideas featured in the course, whether
this takes the form of a historical, theoretical, philosophical, or critical
case study of peacebuilding communication. The written proposal should identify the
guiding question of the research and/or thesis you want to test, why this is an
important question to ask and/or thesis to test, what others have already
written about it (this will require some preliminary bibliographic research),
and what examples and/or other research materials you plan to examine to
address your guiding question and/or test your thesis. This paper should be about 1200-1500 words and
should be carefully written and edited. It must be uploaded for the class to read by
9/26 if it is being discussed on 9/28, or by 9/28 if
it is being discussed on 9/30.
3.
Paper #2: A Case in the Moral Imagination of Peacebuilding Communication (25%)
Drawing
on the Lederach readings, write a paper about the
potential or actual operation of the moral imagination as a mode of creative peacebuilding, using an extended example which applies to
the subject of your term research project.
This paper should be 1200-1500 carefully written and edited words. It must be uploaded for the class to read by
10/24 or 10/26, depending on whether it is being discussed on 10/26 or 10/28,
respectively.
4.
Paper #3:
Peacebuilding Research Paper (25%)
Drawing
extensively on the readings for the course as a whole, write a final paper for
the class on the research project proposed in paper #1. You can incorporate a revised version of
papers #1 and #2 into this final paper, but the paper must be extended beyond
that work to reflect the original research you have undertaken on this project throughout
the semester. It should demonstrate that
you have read and applied the ideas in the course readings, plus additional
readings uncovered in your research. The
paper should be 3,500 – 4,000 words. It
should be carefully written and thoroughly edited. It must be uploaded for the class to read by
11/28 (for 11/30 discussion); 11/30 for 12/2 discussion; 12/5 for 12/7
discussion; 12/7 for 12/9 discussion.
This
paper, as well as the previous two papers, will be assessed for clarity and
relevance of purpose, accuracy and depth of understanding, amount and quality
of research, degree of originality and insight, how well it capitalizes on assigned
readings in the course, and quality of writing.
Papers should
conform to MLA style or to another academic style manual such as APA, using
endnotes or footnotes, or using the parenthetical citation format with a list
of sources cited.
Recommended Books:
David P. Barash
and Charles P. Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: Sage,
2009).
Elise Boulding,
Cultures of Peace (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000).
Kenneth E. Boulding, Stable
Peace (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978).
Charles Chatfield and Ruzanna Ilukhina, ed., Peace/Mir: An Anthology of Historic
Alternative to War (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994).
Ira Chernus,
American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea (Mary Knoll,
NY: Orbis Books,
2004).
John Darby and Roger MacGinty, ed., Contemporary
Peacemaking: Conflict, Violence and
Peace Processes (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004).
Larry Fisk and John Schellenberg, Patterns
of Conflict, Paths to Peace (Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 2000).
Diana Francis, Rethinking War and Peace (London: Pluto Press, 2004).
Douglas P. Fry, Beyond War:
The Human Potential for Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Johan Galtung,
Peace by Peaceful Means (London: Sage Publications, 1996).
Johan Galtung,
Transcend and Transform: An Introduction to Conflict Work
(Boulder, CO: Paradigm Books, 2004).
Johan Galtung,
Carl G. Jacobsen, and Kai Frithjof Brand-Jacobsen, Search for Peace: The Road to TRANSCEND (London: Pluto Press, 2000).
Ellen W. Gorsevski,
Peaceful Persuasion: The Geopolitics of Nonviolent Rhetoric
(Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2004).
Irving Louis Horowitz, The Idea of War and Peace, 3rd
ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007).
Colleen
Roach, ed., Communication and Culture in
War and Peace (Newbury Park, CA:
Sage 1993).
Randy Scherer, The Antiwar Movement (Farmington Hills,
MI: Greenhaven
Press, 2004).
Lisa Schirch,
Ritual and Symbol in Peacebuilding
(Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian
Press, 2005).
Howard Zinn,
ed., The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2003).
“Words kill, words give life;
they’re either poison or fruit—you choose.”
Proverbs 18: 21, The Message: The
Bible in Contemporary Language, Eugene H. Peterson