Professor: Flavia Perea

T - 12:00 pm to 2:45 pm

This course will explore the principles and methodologies of equity-centered approaches for knowledge generation, meaning making, and social transformation through inquiry and the research process. We will examine community-based, participatory, action, and decolonizing approaches to inquiry, and engage with various perspectives on the process, practice, and applications of liberatory inquiry methodologies. We will discuss epistemology and research paradigms; explore a variety of approaches and methodologies, including Participatory Action Research/PAR, Community Based Participatory Research/CBPR, citizen science, and indigenous approaches to research; how different approaches for asking questions, methods for gathering and analyzing information, and sharing knowledge, as well as the principles, truths, and worldviews that undergird different approaches, can be applied in diverse contexts; pragmatic approaches for moving from theory to practice; power and privilege in the context of research; perspectives on investigator identity and location; the promise and limitations of engaged inquiry to help advance social change; and the ethics of inquiry with historically and systemically oppressed people and communities. Engaging with voices, perspectives, sources, and materials from beyond the academy will be central to our work.  Through this course, students will learn to apply course concepts to both their academic and civic work, as well as community-based initiatives to advance justice in society. Ultimately, we will critically examine how inquiry that emphasizes equity, collaboration, and reciprocity in the uncovering, integration, application, and dissemination of knowledge can be a tool of liberation and certain methods a strategy for responding to oppression, colonization, and systems of domination.