Peace Studies Courses for University Degree and Transfer Programs
PEAC 100 Peace Studies I
This interdisciplinary and values-based course is the first of two introductory core courses in Peace Studies. Readings will include United Nations documents, as well as essays and excerpts from the writings of philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, and peace researchers. Students will thus gain familiarity with literature addressing a broad range of past and current theories and discourse related to peace and conflict. Through their own reflection and working collaboratively in groups, students will have the opportunity to move from theory to practice in one of the most challenging issues of humanity’s collective experience: building cultures of peace.
PEAC 101 Peace Studies II
This course is the second of two introductory core courses in Peace Studies at Selkirk College. This course will focus on traditional and non-traditional approaches to Conflict Resolution. Students will be introduced to general principles and key concepts in arbitration, negotiation, mediation and nonviolent resistance; as well as alternative dispute resolution methods, such as Nonviolent Communication, Peacemaking Circles, Conflict Transformation, and Conflict Free Conflict Resolution. Students will practice identifying, analyzing, role playing, mapping, and peacefully resolving or transforming conflicts that range from the interpersonal to the international.
PEAC 200 Studies in Culture and Peace
Peace 200: Studies in Culture and Peace is an interdisciplinary exploration of the ways in which "community and world" are joined in facing the global, cultural, and political issues of our time. The course is made up of three modules, each focusing on a different aspect of peace studies and each taught by a different instructor.
Module 1: Literature and Culture - In Search of Utopia in the Kootenays
Instructor: Myler Wilkinson
Explore cultures of peace, social justice and healing in this unique, intensive course. Learn about the cultural landscape of the Kootenays, a landscape of exile and refuge which includes First Nations peoples, Doukhobors, and Japanese-Canadians. Prepare to study at the Mir Centre for Peace and make a day-long field trip to sites of historical importance.
Module 1 runs over three full days - Friday, September 9 to Sunday, September 11, 2011.
Module 2: People Power: The Arab Spring
Instructor: Jennie Barron
In the winter and spring of 2011 the world witnessed the sudden eruption of dramatic popular uprisings in Tunisia, then Egypt, then throughout the Arab world. After so many years of corruption, poverty, and brutal repression of democratic rights and freedoms, what was it that allowed and encouraged the people of these states to come together at this moment, and act so quickly to overthrow two longstanding brutal dictatorships using largely nonviolent means? Why have the revolutionary struggles played out so differently in places like Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria? This module looks at nonviolent civil resistance to oppression and injustice: why nonviolent resistance is increasingly a strategy of choice for popular movements; the range of methods and tactics nonviolent civil resistance movements employ; and how, when, and why they work.
Module 3: Contexualizing Peace History
Instructor: Takaia Larsen
Newton’s third law states: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This law can be applied not only to physics, but also to Peace Studies. Without war, the concept of peace would not exist.
In this module, students will explore the range and complexities of working toward peace throughout Canadian history. We will examine the way that different kinds of conflict have created different kinds of peace work. Most importantly, students will learn to place activism and pacifism in their historical context.
Note: Students may register for one, two or three modules. However, in order to earn university credit all three modules must be completed.
PEAC 201 Peace, Environment and Human Security
Peace 201 explores the social justice dimensions of the great environmental issues facing our world today - climate change, oil dependency, water scarcity, food security, population growth, and natural resource extraction - focusing in particular on their relationship to peace, conflict and human security. The course introduces students to popular movements for climate justice, water justice and food sovereignty, as well as the concept of environmental peacebuilding. Through readings, case studies, lectures, speakers, films and collaborative learning, Peace 201 offers students both analytical skills and understanding and a hopeful window on some positive and often under-reported changes already taking place around the world.
PEAC 202 Leadership for Peace: the Individual and Social Transformation
Leadership for Peace: the Individual and Social Transformation - begins with the understanding that leadership for peace is, at its foundations, leadership for human rights and social justice; and with the further insight that social transformation is always joined with inner transformation, to the individual who "can change the world". Each semester Peace Studies 202 will focus on one or two leaders in peace - ranging from the political action of Gandhi or Nelson Mandela, to the ideas of Tolstoy or Martin Luther King, to the traditional cultural practices of indigenous peoples, or the human insights of spiritual leaders from diverse cultures. These lives will be measured against issues of authority, power, legitimacy and the will to truth, reconciliation, compassion and healing.
