Concentration

Social Justice Concentration

Department/Program
  • Required Courses (15 Credits)
    • Social Justice 110 and 310
    • One elective course in each of the following Thematic Areas:
      • Systems, Institutions, and Policies: Courses in this category explore the ways that structural power dynamics, political economy, and/or social policies produce and reproduce inequity.
      • Power, Positionality, and Responsibility: Courses in this category theorize and respond to the ways that social location positions people in relation to identity, power, and difference. Courses might explore how different identities and vectors of difference (including race, gender/sexuality, class, ability, religion, nationality, and others) are constituted and intersect.
      • Social Movements and Liberation: Courses in this category engage with concrete cases of historical and contemporary struggles against social injustice, or with practices of social movements.
  • Additional Requirements
    • Project for Action & Change and Social Justice Practicum Course (Social Justice 310): Students will engage in a project, internship, or volunteer experience in which they develop the capacity to work with others in solidarity for social change. Examples might include a social justice-inflected internship or work with a community partner; study-abroad experiences with social justice organizations; volunteering with a campus or off-campus activist organization. Concurrently with the project, students will complete a 1-credit, Credit/No Credit Practicum course that will situate the project within a social justice framework, and contain a written reflection on their project.
    • Integrative Component: Students will produce a substantive written, oral, or multimedia project that reflects on and analyzes their work in the category of Action & Change. The presentation will situate their experiential learning in relation to the concentration coursework and learning goals. The presentation must be public-facing; examples might include presentation at the Power & Privilege Symposium, the Whitman Undergraduate Conference, or other public-facing format. Students will meet with their concentration advisor to discuss the ways it will satisfy the requirement. Some aspect of the project should be archive-able via ARMINDA for future reference of students & community members (as a default, access will be restricted to Whitman users).
  • Notes
    • No more than one course from a single department may be used to satisfy the thematic requirements.
    • At least one of the courses taken to satisfy the thematic requirements must be a 4-credit course.
    • Students may use one course from off-campus study or transfer credit to satisfy the thematic requirement.

Required Courses

Item #
Title
Credits
Sub-Total Credits
5

Thematic Area Electives

Item #
Title
Credits
3 - 4
3 - 4
3 - 4
Sub-Total Credits
10
Total Credits
15