Peace Studies Program

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Based on an understanding that differences enrich our lives and that conflicts provide opportunities for growth, peace studies proposes ways of being in the world that incorporate the skills of listening and dialogue, mediation and negotiation, ideas of rights balanced with responsibilities, questions of justice, and philosophies of nonviolence. As the 21st century finds us living in a world where violence has become banal, where subliminal, virtual, or actual violence bombards us all in every walk of life, where armed political and economic conflicts divide the world again into fiefdoms of ethnicity or privilege, so, too, exist alternatives by which we can live. Peace thought is the study of alternatives to violent conflict.

Peace studies is the interdisciplinary program where students explore those alternatives through the study of conflict, violence, and nonviolence in the lives of individuals, communities and the shared world. Students examine peace and conflict theories as they apply to historical and contemporary conflicts in Baltimore and around the world. Additionally, they practice reflection and analytical thinking and work in communities as engaged citizens in the practice of peace.

Goucher College offers a major and minor in peace studies.

Program Faculty

Professors

Richard Pringle, (psychology)

Associate Professors

Seble Dawit, (human rights and humanitarian law, gender and rights, non-profit organizations, advocacy and strategy, futuring)

Assistant Professors

Yousuf Al-Bulushi, (urban geography; globalization & development; conflict analysis; racialization; Africana Studies; Middle East Studies; The Right to the City; social movements), Jennifer Bess, (early modern prose and poetry; education and public health; Native American studies and ethnic- American literature),  Ailish Hopper, Director (poetry and poetics, new narrative practices, nonviolence and creative action, mediative capacity and community building)

Lecturers

Nancy Magnuson (library science, information retrieval, library research methods)

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