Instructor: Dr. Stephen Kim

1 credit. S/U only.
Offered: Spring 7-Week 2 Session
Visit the Class Roster for Course Times

Course Description

This course seeks to create space for students to have intentional and thoughtful conversations about how their social identities and backgrounds impact their day-to-day life in the Cornell community. Each week, we will focus on a topic of relevance to the student experience that also opens up questions about identity and power. Potential topics include mental health, cancel culture, social media, professionalization, and sustainability. As we move from topic to topic, participants will learn and practice skills for communicating empathetically, maintaining connection across conflict, making sense of personal experience in the contexts of broader structural inequities, and taking everyday action to challenge inequity.

Learning Outcomes

• Develop skills for both listening empathetically to others, sharing one’s own honest perspective during a potentially controversial conversation, and using conflict as a way to form more authentic connections
• Reflect on and analyze how personal experiences fit into larger structures of identity and power
• Plan concrete steps to challenge inequity in our everyday lives

Note: If the course is full, email the instructor to be added to the waitlist.