Courses

PAX 225
The Life and Thought of Gandhi (3)
Mohandas Gandhi treated life as an indivisible whole. He regarded the personal and the public, the religious and the political as fundamentally interrelated aspects of his existence. This course examines the interplay between the life of social activism and the political thought of Gandhi. It explores a series of personal and social experiments he conducted to make self and society. His perspectives on religion, freedom, nonviolence and women are among the issues we closely examine. Wherever possible, we seek appropriate lessons from his life for our time.

PAX 233
The Socially Engaged Imagination (3)
This course explores the role of the imagination in nonviolent social change initiatives. We read and discuss imaginative representations of social conflicts, noticing what happens in us and through us, individually and collectively. Moving back and forth between reading and writing, we investigate how texts speak to us and how to "speak back" through writing. Readings range from Chinua Achebe, James Baldwin and Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Ursula K. LeGuin, Rebecca Solnit and Alice Walker. While turning our attention to the politics of the imagination at home and far away, we create a collaborative, participatory learning community.

PAX 250
Introduction to Peace Studies (3)
The twentieth century witnessed both horrendous violence as well as major experiments in peacemaking.  Along the way, our understanding of the causes of war, violence, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts has matured. This course explores the sources of violence and the ways of creating enduring peace in individual as well as social relations.

PAX 253
Women and the Expansion of Democracy (3)
Black women played a critical role in the centuries-long African American resistance movement for freedom and equality. They demonstrated phenomenal organizational abilities and provided crucial behind-the-scenes support and leadership. Women were the midwives to the American revolution of the middle years of the twentieth century. This course examines the contribution of African American women in gaining fundamental human rights for persons of African descent. The lives of some of the major women participants such as Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson and Fannie Lou Hamer will be the pathway to our exploration of the significance of their role.

PAX 325
Twentieth-Century African American Thinkers (3)
From the earliest times the people of African descent in this country have resisted oppression in a myriad of ways. In their relentless struggle for freedom, African Americans have broadened and deepened the meaning of democracy. In pressing the nation to be more open and just, they have contributed richly to the corpus of modern political and social thought. Their contribution to the expansion of democracy is a major piece of U.S. history. This course explores the meaning of African American thought through the primary writings of thinker-activists such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis and Andrew Young.

PAX 330
Issues of Global Poverty (3)
This course introduces students to the key theoretical perspectives on development and some of the major themes of world poverty. Causes of poverty are explored in the context of the development models which nations have pursued in the last hundred or more years. An important aim here is to raise consciousness about the extent of poverty globally, including the United States of America. We examine ways of ameliorating the worst effects of poverty. Equally, this course explores principled and practical lifestyle alternatives for a just and equitable world economic order.

PAX 335
Nonviolence in and through History (3)
We now have a rich record of creative experiments in the application of the laws of love and self-suffering in personal and societal change. Though not yet a fully developed art-science form, active nonviolence provides us with alternatives to war and violence that merit attention. This course explores the religious and philosophical foundations of nonviolence, and it examines the essential elements of the theory and practice of nonviolence in movements for social change.

PAX 340
Conflict and Peacebuilding (3)
This course examines the multiple and interrelated causes of conflict and approaches to peacebuilding across cultures. The focus varies from semester to semester but may include citizen diplomacy, human rights, humanitarian assistance, the role of the media in peacebuilding and peacebuilding after genocide and mass violence. Students also build practical skills through mediation training.

PAX 345
Conflict Transformation through Dialogue (3)
This course explores the theory and practice of dialogue, “the art of thinking together.” We investigate experiments in dialogue at the local, national and international level while paying close attention to the art of inner dialogue and small group dialogue inside and outside of class. We examine assumptions about conflict, the potency of cultural and religious differences in conflict, the complexities of intervention and the possibility of transformation. Students receive training in restorative justice and practical

PAX 410
Democracy in the United States of America, 1919–1968 (3)
The promise of freedom that lay at the heart of the American Revolution remained essentially unfulfilled for generations. For too long the nation ignored its high ideals thus denying millions of women and men their fundamental citizenship rights. The forgotten millions pressed forward insisting on transforming this nation’s institutions and structures. This course examines the struggles of several significant twentieth-century social change movements that helped to create a more democratic and open nation.

PAX 415
Women, Feminism and Peacemaking (3)
This course investigates the impact of war and violence on women and efforts being made locally and internationally to educate, empower and organize women as peacemakers. Through readings, films, guest presentations and communitybased learning, we explore the challenges and opportunities in building alliances across differences. Topics include feminist perspectives on globalization, gender, race, class, culture, curiosity, partnership and peacemaking.

PAX 430
Gandhi, Dorothy Day & Malcolm X: The Quest for Personal and Social Transformation (3)
Mohandas Gandhi, Dorothy Day and Malcolm X recognized that their capacity to bring about social change was tied to their ability to change themselves. Gandhi worked out his vision of a compassionate society through explorations of the Bhagavad Gita and the writings of Tolstoy and Ruskin. For Day the way for the “building of a new world within the shell of the old” opened when she met Peter Maurin. Malcolm X’s vision of racial harmony and reconciliation emerged in his post-Mecca months. This course explores the link each saw between personal and social transformation and how they changed themselves and their worlds.

PAX 450
Internship (3)
The internship provides students with opportunities to deepen their understanding of the practical means of working for social change. A PAX faculty advisor works with each student to locate a placement that matches the student’s interests. Examples of appropriate placements include the Boulder County Aids Project, Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, Facing History and Ourselves, PeaceJam, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, the Rocky Mountain Survivor’s Center, KGNU Radio, MESA (Moving to End Sexual Violence), Restorative Solutions, Longmont Community Justice Partnership, the Buddhist Coalition for Bodhisattva Activity, Regis University’s Institute on the Common Good, the Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence, Pax Christi, the American Friends Service, Rights for All People and the Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights.

PAX 480
Senior Project (3)
The senior project builds upon every facet of the student’s work at Naropa—course work, internship, community-based learning, world wisdom traditions and contemplative practices. We encourage students to design senior projects that include self-reflection and inquiry, creativity and scholarship, and the intention to serve a specific community. The project requires both sustained independent work and collaboration, as students read and research, meet in pairs and small groups, conduct interviews in the community and receive feedback from faculty mentors. The outcomes vary—publication, performance, building organizational capacity, and other forms of public work. Students complete the departmental portfolio as part of their senior projects, which culminate in celebratory presentations to the community. Family and friends who are visiting Boulder for graduation festivities are invited to these final presentations.

PAX 482
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Search for the
Beloved Community (3)
The 1955–56 Montgomery Bus Boycott brought to the fore a leader of immense distinction in Martin Luther King Jr., and it opened the way for the creation of the mass-based Southern Nonviolent Freedom Movement. The new leadership and the new energy that came forth not only quickened the pace for large-scale political change, but also gave birth to the vision of the “Beloved Community.” This course explores the ways in which King and his associates in the South-based, Black-led Freedom Movement sought to make whole the nation’s broken community by transcending barriers of race, religion, class and ethnicity.