What can I study in IGD 101?
IGD 101 courses take up questions that shape how we understand ourselves and how we live together. Examples of past topics have included race and gender, disability culture, spirituality and wonder, and polarization and political identity.
What sets these courses apart is how they are taught. Each half-semester course is co-taught by instructors from different disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and arts. In a single classroom, students see how different fields frame a question, weigh evidence, and make meaning, and they bring their own experiences into the conversation. This is the liberal arts at work: not one lens, but many, held together in dialogue.
What will I learn?
Students learn to:
- Listen closely, ask thoughtful questions, and examine their own assumptions
- Place personal experience within its broader social and historical context
- Understand how experience and circumstance shape our relationships with others
- Recognize both real differences and shared concerns, without requiring that everyone agree
- Collaborate across difference on questions that matter to their communities
What is Dins Dialogue?
Dins Dialogue helps students build the skills that make deeper connection possible: listening with care, critically analyzing social conditions, engaging honestly across difference, and making meaning together. These are capacities students carry with them into their relationships, communities, and careers long after Furman.
Can the program work with my group?
Yes. Program staff design and facilitate workshops for campus partners and student groups. To plan a workshop or explore how dialogue might support your work, contact co-directors Jocelyn Boulware Bruce and Claire Whitlinger.
