PhD level course open to MSW students with permission of the instructor
In keeping with the Carnegie Foundation initiative in doctoral studies, this Ph.D. level course offers a means of stepping back and reflecting upon our discipline, past and present.
This course will engage with the questions of why history and what history? History of the present or ‘counter-memory’. Taking from Foucault, notions of problematisation and the creation of ‘events’, we will examine rupture, shifts and continuities (including unexpected) in various fields of social work practice and policy, and with various population groups.
Students’ assignment will consist in the development of such an ‘archive’. An archive is a set of documents and is a ‘space’ –materially and conceptually. Documentary materials will include texts of all sorts (biographies, agency reports,…), and also visual documents (e.g., photographs). Types of analysis: textual analysis, including discourse analysis and visual methodologies.
The course is offered primarily to doctoral students at the Faculty of Social Work. A limited number of doctoral students from other disciplines, and masters’ students in social work doing related research, may be able to join the class. The course will be offered in July-August 2009, twice weekly, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, starting the first week of July until August 13. We will decide on either a morning time or an afternoon time based on participants’ availability.