*Teaching Peace: An interactive discourse by scholar and writer Linda Hess*

Venue: Open Space, 301, (second floor), Kanchanjunga bldg. Kanchan lane,
off Law College Road, Near Krishna Dining Hall, Pune -411004
Date: February 3, 2011
Time: 5.30 – 7.30pm

Most violent events in history involve ordinary people, not just criminals,
lunatics or sociopaths. We ask ourselves “How can people do such things?”
“Could we also do such things under similar circumstances?” “How could we
prepare ourselves not to behave that way?”

Is education irrelevant and useless to learning ways of dealing with
conflict? Can education
touch children and youth in a transformative way--a
way that gives them hope of integrating the various parts of themselves and
their world, changing themselves and the world?

To arouse a deeper and more powerfully felt engagement with these questions,
Open Space invites youth, educators, activists, artistes, media
professionals and all interested to interact with Dr Linda Hess, who has
developed an experimental course to:

(1) investigate the connections between inner and outer worlds, the personal
and social-political roots of (non)violence;

(2) take steps, as participants in history, toward recognizing and
transforming violence in ourselves at the same time as we strive to solve
social, political, economic, environmental, and other problems that confront
us.

This interaction is a continuation of Open Space’s Keeping The Peace lecture
series to encourage discussion and dialogue on issues that
are dividing and
polarising society and public opinion.

The interaction will explore new ways of teaching compassion and ethics.

Linda says: “We keep things compartmentalized. It is this hard separation
between what we call “intellectual” and the other parts of our being,
including the emotional, imaginative, and moral, that gives rise to despair
about the meaning of education…”

All are welcome.

--

Dr Linda Hess is a scholar, writer, and a lover of Kabir. She began her
travels to India in the 1960s and has been studying and translating the
poetry of Kabir since the 1970s. Her publications and present research
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">include The Bijak of Kabir, (with Sukhdev Singh), considered by many to be
one of the best translations of Kabir into English, and Singing Emptiness:
Kumar Gandharva Performs the Poetry of Kabir. She is currently working on a
book titled Bodies of Song: Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in
Northern India. She has also been an advisor to The Kabir Project since
2003. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at
Stanford
University and is Co-Director of Stanford's Center for South Asia.

Open Space is an initiative of the Centre for Communication and Development
Studies (CCDS). OS helps young people unpack their differences and learn to
see themselves and the world around them through different lenses.

www.openspaceindia.org /www.infochangeindia.org

For details contact: Rakesh – 9921090931 or
Ujwala Samarth – 020-25457371

HT: Chintan