Multicultural and Trauma-Sensitive Expressive Arts Therapy

ORG ET670 - Multicultural and Trauma-Sensitive Expressive Arts Therapy

Credits: 3

This course offers students a unique immersion experience in an international context (Guatemala). The course content is built on the tenets of theories that generate creative collaboration including expressive arts therapy, participatory action research, dialogical theories, liberation psychology, and intersubjective practice. The cultural intelligence (CQ) construct is studied and adopted experientially throughout the course. The course begins with an in depth review of Guatemala’s history of colonization and civil war and its relationship with current social and health issues, as well as community resilience in the face of adversity. WJC students and faculty, in collaboration with faculty and students from Guatemala, then co-construct and facilitate a community arts engagement in the Sololá community (representative of Guatemala’s four major Ethnic groups: Kackchiquel; Queqchi; Mayan; and Ladino). They collectively select culturally appropriate materials for the activity and seek ongoing feedback from community members, working to empower all community members in their role as expert and co-creator in the community engagement.