Dialogue Diff: In Your Shoes

1 Credit · Level: Undergraduate

In an era of intense ideological, social, and political polarization, how can we learn not merely to converse, but also to listen and respect one another? How can we articulate and share our deepest concerns, hopes, fears, and dreams with others who hold very different perspectives on politics, community, economics, or faith? Since 2018, the In Your Shoes project has been a way to move beyond the political divide and by illuminating the hopes, fears, and dreams that animate the daily lives of students. This course will draw from the earlier In Your Shoes iterations by employing a myriad of techniques, skills, and exercises drawn from theater and performance and developed by Georgetown’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, as one potential avenue for developing the skills, habits, and emotional foundation necessary for productive and respectful dialogue and understanding. From here, students will engage further on themes that emerge from the In Your Shoes project, including intergroup, interfaith, and antiracist dialogue. This class will bring together an intentionally diverse student cohort (with regard to race, religion, cultural background, gender, sexuality, disciplinary emphasis, etc.) co-led by faculty, staff, and previous In Your Shoes student participants. Throughout the course, we will foster respectful, probing, honest, and empathetic communication rooted in the Lab’s signature “performing one another” approach in which two-way pair conversations between student participants, based on a simple prompt, are mutually recorded, curated, transcribed, and then shared with the group in excerpted form through performance. The goals of this process are not to erase difference or conflict in the name of finding “common ground.” Rather, we will use performance as an experiential vehicle for stepping into one another's' shoes”—that is, for listening deeply, speaking honestly, engaging difference respectfully, and finally expressing in an embodied, empathetic way the words, insights, concerns and perspectives of others. This course is available to all disciplines and all years and levels (undergraduate and graduate) with no previous performance experience required. Interested students should respond to a short series of questions at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1R9kbk5U1hS7UCFB7NqcKLpNGYNXIgPTC5AUZNiUF9HA/viewform?gxids=7757&edit_requested=true to apply for the class.