Fall 2024 Justice Education Courses

The Institute for Social Concerns offered the following courses during the fall 2024 semester. Click here to see the current semester’s courses.

Abled in a Disabled World: Creating Inclusive Communities

In this course, students gain a deeper understanding of their unconscious bias towards differently-abled people, and study theories of mindfulness, giving voice, empowerment, and existing public policies.

Appalachia Seminar

The Appalachia Seminar is designed to introduce students to the cultural and social issues of the Appalachian region — its history, people, culture, challenges, and strengths — through study and experiential learning.

Art and Social Change

Students will work with a South Bend neighborhood to explore a structural challenge and, with the guidance of a local artist, respond to this challenge alongside community members in creating an artistic piece that serves the good of the neighborhood.

Discernment

The Discernment Seminar provides undergraduate students an opportunity to reflect on their undergraduate education and to explore their respective vocations as it relates to the common good.

Gender at Work in US History

This course takes a chronological approach to show gender’s evolution and ongoing intersections with class, race, age, religion, region, and sexuality from 1776 to the near present.

Human Development, Human Flourishing

This course will draw from multiple perspectives to foster a deep appreciation of human development and flourishing. Human development is a complex and fragile, yet many splendored.

Introduction to Poverty Studies

In this gateway course we ask, “Why are people poor?” We take an interdisciplinary look at poverty to better understand the forces that maintain poverty and the forces that resist it.

Just Wage Research Lab

This interdisciplinary research lab enlists students in the efforts of the Just Wage Initiative (JWI), a collaborative research and advocacy project of the Higgins Labor Program at the Institute for Social Concerns.

Mass Incarceration Research Lab

This research lab will employ an interdisciplinary approach to research on a range of issues related to mass incarceration.

Mind and Society: Cognitive Science and Justice

This course explores the interaction of thinking and action for justice, of cognitive science and social change. How might we examine the ideas with which we think as we envision social transformation and work toward solidarity and the common good?

Refugees, Rights, and Resettlement

This seminar will provide an overview of and framework to understand the global refugee crisis. We will trace the evolution of international refugee law and policy dealing with this ever-growing population.

Surviving the Digital Apocalypse

With each new advance in human communication technology, the cultural DNA mutates and spawns new forms of art, belief, political discourse, and economic power. Understanding this process is the key to surviving the upheaval.

Technology and Justice

Explore the responsibility inherent in using, creating, and developing new technology. Students will begin with the following questions: What is justice? How does technology promote or reduce justice? Does it do both?

Writing for Social Change

This course invites students to explore the ways writing can develop our moral imagination about what poverty is and what our world could be without poverty.

Click here to see the list of courses offered during the spring 2024 semester.