About
This course will introduce MSW students to human rights and social justice perspectives in order to examine the shifting landscape of diversity, oppression, power, and privilege. The fundamental goal of the course is for students to develop critical consciousness in order to gain competencies to address diversity, privilege and oppression in social work practice. The importance of power and the dynamics of domination and subordination in multiple manifestations of oppression, particularly among historically oppressed groups, will be explored. An understanding of these concepts integrated with an understanding of one's self within these systems is essential for social work practice. This course will employ a practice framework that integrates 1) a human rights perspective promoting the dignity, respect, and well-being of all persons; 2) a social justice perspective aiming to understand and ameliorate oppression, unequal access to resources, and social inequities; 3) and diversity and cultural humility, which requires critical self-evaluation and self-awareness in order to address power and privilege and to develop respectful cultural sensitivity. Students will utilize this practice framework to address social injustice through analysis, self-reflection, and peer collaboration. The course will serve as a transformational space for students and instructors to cultivate and exercise cultural humility when exploring how multiple identities shape our beliefs, assumptions, biases, behaviors, and life experiences. It will challenge and deconstruct assumptions within theories and research methodologies relevant to social work in order to understand the dynamics that manage and sustain oppression at individual and institutional levels. This course will examine how oppression and intersectionality affect service delivery at micro and macro levels, and how a human rights framework integrated with cultural humility ameliorates social injustice and promotes culturally responsive services. This course will promote students' career-long process of fostering cultural humility and applying an understanding of human rights, diversity, and oppression to their practice with individuals, families, groups, organizations, communities, and society.
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