Humanizing Politics through Performance: Prof. Derek Goldman & Ijeoma Njaka Among Awardees of Provost’s Innovation Award

The annual Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Award was announced Friday, September 10, 2021 and winners include two members of the Department of Performing Arts community at Georgetown University: Derek Goldman, Chair of the Department of Performing Arts and co-Founding Director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (a joint initiative between the School of Foreign Service and Department of Performing Arts), and Ijeoma Njaka, Inclusive Pedagogy Specialist and Project Associate at the Lab. 

The Provost’s Innovation in Teaching Award was launched in Fall 2018 by Provost Robert Groves. Each year, the award recognizes a faculty member, a faculty team, or a whole department that has demonstrated exceptional creativity, innovation, and potential for both wide and deep impact in the field of pedagogy.

This year’s winning course, “Dialogue and Difference: Performing One Another” (TPST 415/GOVX 424), is one of the pilot courses under Georgetown’s “Core Curriculum Initiative: Enhancing and Transforming the Core Curriculum” and stems from “In Your Shoes,” a Lab Project championing inter-political dialogue. “Performing One Another” uses theatre games and performance to create space for meaningful dialogue about nuanced political issues; the namesake exercise is one in which two partners listen, record, transcribe, and act out the stories of one another. The class was also featured in national news outlets such as PBSNewsHour and the Washington Post.

Co-winners of the award who teach the class alongside Goldman and Njaka include Daniel Brumberg, Director of Democracy and Governance Studies in the Department of Government, and Rachel Gartner, Director for Jewish Life in the Main Campus Ministry. All awardees will be honored in a special ceremony hosted by the Provost on Friday, September 24th.