On Developing “Coming Apart & Coming Together,", WTCI’s 9-week online seminar
The 2019 graduating class of WTCI’s two-year postgraduate clinical training program continues to meet regularly. Our experience of learning together and sharing community during these increasingly challenging times has fostered strong bonds that all of us in our own ways value and depend upon professionally. Therefore, not surprisingly, we are deeply invested in WTCI and its future directions. Most of us have been able to serve on at least one WTCI committee and/or offer a WTCI workshop. As a group, in September of 2020, we composed a letter to the board offering some ideas and recommendations for the organization moving forward. The board received our ideas with enthusiasm and offered tremendous support in helping us promote several new initiatives.
The Online Curriculum Committee is an outgrowth of the collective thinking that went into that letter. An online program is by no means an idea to replace the face-to-face program. We believe there is a sense of community that develops when meeting in person that is irreplaceable. There are, however, ways that community is created online, and a remote program would allow people out of state or people who are unable to attend in person to benefit from the strength and ideology of this program in a different but equitable way. We also felt this could serve the dual benefits of sharing what we all hold dear to a wider audience and increase WTCI’s visibility.
In the summer of 2021, with the board’s support, Aleksandra Rayska and Marisa Mabli put out a call to the WTCI listserv asking anyone interested in joining an Online Curriculum Committee to reach out, and the following people answered the call: Lela Zaphiropoulos, Debra Kram-Fernandez, Tulasi Jordan, and Leah Kramnick. We have been meeting almost weekly since October 5, 2021, at 8PM, and it has been an amazing experience in co-creating both our group relationships and this 9-week online program.
“Coming Apart & Coming Together” Contemporary Intersectional Feminist Theory and its Application to the Body, Society, and Identity will meet Wednesdays, online from March 23 – May 18, 6-8PM ET. Qualifying New York State participants receive 18 CEUs. Many of us on the committee will be offering modules, and we are joined by Rebecca Brown, Joanne Messina, Ruchi Amin, Susan Gutwill, Wiola Rebecka, and Andrea Gitter. The curriculum moves from the body to society to identity as we endeavor to understand the collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic in addition to heightened social unrest and political discord, and how this is presenting in our clinical work. We apply WTCI’s rich history of innovative approaches to clinical practice, as we explore current challenges in psychotherapeutic encounters. We will keep you posted on this first iteration of WTCI’s online curriculum and invite you to join us as we grow this new opportunity!
Though “Coming Apart & Coming Together” is sold out, you may sign up for the waiting list – we will let you know about future opportunities! Click the waitlist button below and then choose “Tickets” to sign up.
Questions? Contact us: admin@wtci-nyc.org