In Your Shoes(™): Georgetown and Patrick Henry...
IYS PHC/GU is a collaborative intercollegiate project of The Lab, Georgetown University’s Democracy & Governance program, and Patrick Henry College. This project is an exemplar of the fruitful outcomes of IYS multidisciplinary collaborations and provides a powerful model and road map for future intercollegiate initiatives. This project catalyzed IYS work on the issue of polarization in the US. The project has won national recognition – see the PBS coverage on our MEDIA page – and has had an enduring impact on the overall trajectory of the In Your Shoes initiative.
The Path to the Patrick Henry-Georgetown Project on Polarization: A model for future intercollegiate collaborations
Beginning in 2018, Dr. Daniel Brumberg, Director of Democracy and Governance Studies at Georgetown, envisioned, designed and ultimately implemented an expansion of the Democracy and Governance MA program to rigorously address polarization in the US. The PHC/GU iteration of In Your Shoes is now a featured element of that program, and results from a close collaboration between Brumberg, Goldman and PHC Professor Cory Grewell.
As part of a larger vision for his program, in Spring 2018 Dr. Brumberg proposed adapting In Your Shoes methodology to address the problem of polarization on the American college campus. Goldman sketched a project to specifically engage students of different social, religious, and political backgrounds in a journey of understanding across divides.
In Summer 2018, Brumberg and Goldman visited Patrick Henry College (PHC) to explore possible collaborations. Founded in 1998, PHC’s emphasis on scholarship, religious values, and community echoed many GU traditions. At the same time, PHC’s Protestant-Christian orientation also contrasted with GU’s more liberal ecumenicalism, thus echoing wider social, religious, and ideological divisions in American society.
These convergences and contrasts boded well for collaboration. Prospects for partnership grew when PHC Professor Cory Grewell – a scholar of literature and faculty mentor to PHC’s theater club – came on board. The faculty team began to recruit an inaugural group of students from each campus.
Over the course of the full 2018-2019 school year, the group met regularly, each group making the 50-mile drive to the other campus. The ensemble’s work pivoted around using prompts such as “home” and “belief” to engage in paired discussions that are recorded and transcribed with great precision. Each student then reads a section of their counterpart’s narrative. Enhanced by group call-and-response exercises and other performance workshops and techniques, the students probed complex issues including loneliness and belonging, gender and sexuality, race, faith and belief, grief, fear, and loss.
Watching their colleagues tell their own stories and thus “stepping into their shoes,” they embarked on journeys of self and collective discovery. Sections of their scripts were woven together and then presented in late April 2019 before audiences on both campuses. These presentations – and the “talk back” sessions that followed them – were revelatory for both the performers and audience. While the work did not signal some obvious or simple common ground, these public events highlighted pathways for understanding, respect, and empathy despite – or perhaps because of – the differences that these courageous students brought to this process.
In Summer 2019, the project received a grant from GU’s “Transforming the Core Curriculum Initiative.” With additional support from the GU’s Government Department and the Baker Trust for Leadership, the project created a Dialogue and Difference: Performing One Another (TPST 415/GovX424), a five-credit course launched in Spring 2020. PHC and GU once again joined forces, but this time with ten students from GU and eight from PHC. The mentor team was also expanded to include The Lab’s Inclusive Pedagogy Specialist, Ijeoma Njaka, as well as Rabbi Rachel Gartner.
With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020, and both campuses moving to virtual instruction, the project has adapted and continued to move forward very actively in an online format, with students joining from their homes as far away as Sri Lanka. While nothing can fully replace the experience of being physically together, this methodology does lend itself exceptionally well to this new social-distancing reality.
“I joined this project because I wanted to challenge myself to engage with unfamiliar spaces and frame my thinking around new political perspectives through voicing my experiences and sharing community with others.”
“We all have a story to tell. But many times these stories are not told... In Your Shoes provides that platform for me to reveal those stories in a fruitful and thought-provoking way. But it also gets me to hear new stories, untold stories. Stories that I would have never imagined hearing.”
“I want to better understand and empathize with those around me, and make a little more sense of what's going on in the world through its most important aspect: the people.”
“I wanted to be in a situation that is set up to allow actual dialogue...So much of the conversation that we have between differing viewpoints happens on social media which is very much not tailored for actual discussion.”
Partners
