Confronting the Past: Global Perspectives on Transformative Justice

3 units

Legacies of historic injustice are among the world's most pressing problems. This rotating Ampersand course examines how communities understand and grapple with legacies of historic injustice, especially relating to colonialism, slavery, genocide, and other systematic violence, through strategies of community remembrance and repair. The course combines grounding in reckonings with historic injustice in the context of greater St. Louis with comparative engagement with other U.S. and global contexts. Engaging these issues from a variety of perspectives—spanning the humanities and social sciences, art and design, public health, law, and education—we will apply theoretical and empirical frameworks to existing or potential approaches to remembrance and repair. Our core aim is to work together to consider and build comparative and collective understanding of community reckonings with the legacies of historic injustice, informing local, national and global reparative efforts. Whereas the fall Confronting the Past course focused on efforts to address historic injustice in St. Louis and the wider U.S., this spring section of the course we will shift the focus to global cases of Confronting the Past.