Want to take your interest in movement and art to the next level? Each quarter, we highlight a course related to the mission of MoveWell. Read below for this quarter’s courses.

Empowerment Self-Defense

WL Arts 19

Practical introduction to empowerment self defense (ESD): feminist, gender-inclusive, antiracist self-defense system. Empowerment self defense treats violence as tool of social control. Accordingly, ESD attends to recurrent scripts for violence and offers verbal and physical means of self protection and conflict resolution. ESD also recognizes that empowerment requires unlearning, challenging of social norms as we internalize them, and learning physical and verbal skills for self protection. Students learn verbal and physical strategies for countering violence, and mechanisms through which violence typically occurs. Focus on types of violence and harassment students are most likely to encounter. Studio-based class consists of physical drills, verbal exercises, readings by scholars studying self defense, and discussion. Students have chance to put skills into practice through dynamic training scenarios.

Instructor: Janet O’Shea

Spring 2018 | TBD