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Difficult Dialogues logo--in dialogue people learn to use the energy of their differences to enhance their collective wisdom
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Co-sponsored by Higgins School of Humanities and IDCE (International Development, Community and Environment). Funded by a major grant from the Ford Foundation

Difficult Dialogues is about creating a culture of dialogue on campus in which the practice of dialogue is recognized, appreciated, and practiced both inside and outside the classroom. We hope to do this by: building skills of dialogue among a sizeable number of faculty, staff, and students; creating opportunities for the community to engage in dialogue around significant and controversial issues common to us all; and integrating dialogue into a number of academic courses across the curriculum, thus ensuring its continued practice.

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Discussion

N A T I O N A L
National Difficult Dialogues Initiative

 

Agency


In the broadest sense, agency means the capacity to act. Yet many people feel powerless in the face of contemporary political, economic and environmental conditions. Can we have agency amidst these daunting challenges? Can we avoid being paralyzed or overwhelmed, distracted, or in denial?

This semester, we will be asking these questions together in our dialogue symposium. First, what is agency? What types of agency are possible at the present moment, and how does that delimit our world? What access to agency do we have, individually and collectively, and how might we use it? Given the realities of our time, can we re-envision what is possible, with creativity and community, and act on it?

In the face of the worst aspects of human experience (genocide, racism, abject poverty, exploitation, environmental degradation), how do many of us continue to act with purpose? What are the limits of agency, and what are its pitfalls?

This spring, we turn to these questions with particular emphasis on the power of the arts — film, narrative, visual arts, place-making, design — to provoke, educate, enlighten, re-envision, inspire, heal, and transform. And we celebrate the flourishing of agency in the acts of members of our own community, here and around the world.

For a full listing of this semester's symposium events >>

 

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Inviting DialogueInviting Dialogue: Renewing the Deep Purposes of Higher Education

The Higgins School has just published a document that recounts the growth of the Difficult Dialogues project at Clark, and offers a number of resources for further exploration of the work of dialogue.

From the introduction: The work of the Difficult Dialogues initiative at Clark began when we responded to the Ford Foundation call for proposals in the Spring of 2005. Though there was a range of more specific issues and incentives behind their call, we took dialogue itself as our path. Examining discourse on our campus, we began to explore the possibilities for more mindful and fruitful exchanges in classrooms, campus life, faculty governance, and in relationships with the larger community.

If you are interested in obtaining a copy of the document, please contact Lisa Gillingham at the Higgins School or call the office at 508 793 7479.

 



2011-12 Difficult Dialogues Fellows

We are pleased to welcome a new group of Difficult Dialogues Fellows for the 2010–11 academic year. They will serve as teaching assistants in the dialogue seminars, facilitators at our public programs, liaisons to student groups, and help to plan future events. They include Alison Mullan-Stout, Madeleine Rozanski, Noah Greenstein, Jesse Manuta, Andrew Schuschu, Maria Engels, Emma Craig and Anthony Campos. [left] DD Fellow Laura Nowell ’11 co-facilitates a dialogue seminar, fall 2009.

 

 

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Contact us

Sarah Buie

Director, Difficult Dialogues Project
Director, Higgins School of Humanities
Professor, V&PA
sbuie@clarku.edu

Sara Raffo

Assistant Director
sraffo@clarku.edu