“The Philadelphia Center faculty and staff provided me with the steady support I needed to function in a drastically new environment, while simultaneously pushing me to see the world through a wider lens. The confidence I gained through my experiences in Philadelphia allowed me to overcome my fear of the unknown—opening wide the doors of the world.”
Abigail Stonerook, Kalamazoo College
Fall 2004
Women Organized Against Rape, Crisis Intervention Intern
City Seminars
Urban Political and Social Systems, Issues and Practices
Deborah Leibel
Urban Political and Social Systems, Issues and Practices offers an opportunity to critically examine our selves and positions as well as our relationship with others in connection with a variety of urban policies, programs and concerns. Looking at how certain factors, and we as individuals, affect major urban policies and practices, we will explore their histories, trends, conflicts, controversies, responses, and prospects. Students are encouraged to clarify their positions, challenge conventional assumptions, develop a more comprehensive view based on integration of practical and political concepts and to explore options for action/change as we find meaningful ways to apply new awareness and knowledge.
This course moves from examining identity and self, to other, community, institution and society. We will look at the political processes that underlie policy and practice concerning issues of social justice and economic human rights. Specifically, we will explore difference and its consequences; how social problems are identified, defined and addressed; the pervasive nature of social inequality; the ways in which systems are structured and function (and in whose interests they operate); and how we might facilitate positive social change. This examination will be illustrated by selected topics relating to urban people such as poverty, education, homelessness, substance abuse, crime and punishment.
Our inquiry will be exemplified experientially by site visits to relevant institutions and organizations, presentations by local professionals and activists, and seminar discussion and exploration. Some field opportunities may include touring a prison, speaking with a community of people who are homeless, examining juvenile and adult criminal courts, exchanging with students in an urban high school, exploring an economically disadvantaged community with local activists/advocates, experiencing minority status in a setting where you are outside of the mainstream culture, investigating the process of applying for a social service, and meeting with representatives of grassroots community efforts.