Social Justice program

Undergrad minor

Help solve problems and create a more just world.

Throughout UW-La Crosse's social justice minor program students engage in assessing different forms and manifestations of inequality. They evaluate strategies and policies aimed at addressing these inequalities and propose new solutions based on those assessments and evaluations.

The social justice minor helps create critical thinkers who can act as interdisciplinary and intersectional problem solvers. The program is a part of UWL’s Race Gender and Sexuality Studies Department.

What is social justice?

Social justice is fairness as it relates to rights, opportunities, and access to resources within society. This includes questions of housing, healthcare, political representation and participation, the economy and more.

The social justice minor has surrounded me with inspiring people and has empowered me to advocate for a fair and equitable education system.

Mary Miller

Careers in social justice

A social justice minor pairs well with a number of majors and helps prepare students for a wide variety of careers.

What distinguishes UWL’s social justice minor?

Flexibility to choose your focus in an interdisciplinary field

Students can take courses from a wide variety of disciplines. Students can focus on social justice as it relates to environmental issues, planning and development, the economy, public policy, or a variety of other topics. After taking the introductory course (RGS or SOC 150: Introduction to Social Justice), minors can study a variety of social problems or choose to focus on one general issue. Either way, minors do so by choosing a set of five courses from a variety of departments, including: Anthropology, Economics, Educational Studies, English, Geography, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Public Administration, Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Recreation Management, and Sociology.

Learn to think in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary fashion

The interdisciplinary framework of the program allows students to “surround” a problem and offer critical and complex solutions to critical and complex problems. These are precisely the skills that graduate school directors and employers are looking for.

Build skills for work, life

Each course requires students to assess different forms and manifestations of inequality, evaluate strategies and policies aimed at addressing these inequalities, and propose new solutions based on those assessments and evaluations.

Courses in the minor help sharpen minors’ skills in

Critical thinking
Written and oral communication
Creative problem-solving

Sample courses

RGS 409 20th Century Civil Rights Movement This course explores the modern civil rights movement in the US and the struggle for African Americans and other marginalized groups to gain equal rights in voting, education, employment, housing, and other facets of life in the US. It begins with the MOWM and examines the seemingly completing philosophies of civil rights organizations such as CORE, SNCC, SCLC, BPP, AIM, SDS, NCAI, YLP, RG, NOW, NBFO, the Mattachine Society, the Daughters of Bilitis, STAR and other civil rights organizations, leaders, and local people in shaping their own destinies. It highlights and interrogates major national and local political struggles rooted in racial, gender, and sexual identities and their reciprocal relationships with international political and anti-colonial movements from 1941 to the present. It concludes with exploring the link between convict leasing, prison reform movements, political prisoners, and the prison industrial complex as the New Jim Crow. Prerequisite: one of the following: ERS 100, RGS 100, WGS 100, EDS 206, HIS 210. (Cross-listed with HIS/RGS; may only earn credit in one department.) Offered Spring.

ANT 307 International Development and Culture Change In an increasingly global world, what does it mean for cultures to change? What does it mean for cultures to stay the same? This course examines what "development" means to people in different cultures, and how the concept of development is itself a product of colonialism, the Cold War, and the current focus on what has been called the neoliberal global economy. The goals of the course are 1) to provide students with a comprehensive study of what economic, social, cultural, and political development has meant over time, and 2) to illustrate the benefits, limitations, and consequences of "progress" and "development" in the lives of people all over the globe. Course examples will come from topics such as conservation, sustainability, and the environment; the preservation of indigenous peoples' ways of life; tourism and its effects in a global world; gender and development; disaster response and reconstruction; and the roles of social movements, development aid, and non-governmental organizations in international development. Offered Occasionally.

ECO 212 Search for Economic Justice Through a mixture of face-to-face, online, and experiential methods, students will explore, examine, and compare and contrast the concept of economic justice from several theoretical perspectives including Amartya Sen, John Rawls, and Fredrich Hayek. From there the course will explore human rights and economics, the role of formal and informal institutions and the role of globalization. Students will be exposed to examples of women's rights and how the expansion of personal justice relates to economic development. Lastly, students will be exposed to data and other tools used to measure economic justice, freedom and individual rights through an analysis of different databases on human rights and institutions. Students may only earn credit in one of the following: ANT 212, ECO 212, ENG 212, PHL 212, POL 212. Offered Occasionally.

PUB 332 Urban Policy An in-depth analysis of the forms, functions, and problems of urban governments with special attention to metropolitan areas. Field work and the materials of contemporary urban politics will be used. Prerequisite: POL 102 or junior standing. Offered Fall.

SOC 313 Law and Society This course examines the law as a social construction. This involves exploring the notion that the civil and criminal law, deviance and criminal behavior, and various actors in the legal and criminal justice arenas are not to be taken for granted as natural, inevitable, and objective but rather, as rooted in social and political forces. Thus, this course explores the historical development of the law, social change, inequalities in the application of the law, why we obey or fail to obey the law, and heavily debated contemporary US laws. Prerequisite: SOC 110 or SOC 120 or SOC 202 or ANT 101. Offered Annually.