This is the gateway course to Howard's proposed Social Justice Studies certificate. It is, therefore, a prerequisite to enroll in other certificate courses.
Since the inception of the United States of America, Black Americans have been subject to all manner of social injustice. These facts are well known. In this course, we will think about what justice looks like for Black Americans. In doing so, we will consider general questions about social justice, the nature of racism in America, and tools that may be used to combat the effects of racial discrimination.
Focuses on the United States’ response to the large-scale distribution and illicit use of narcotics. By the 1980s, Federal and state agencies lead a campaign to rid the nation of the scourge of drugs and crime. Politicians passed laws and used mass incarceration as a solution to punish drug dealers and substance abusers indiscriminately. Explores this multi-layered and complex issue and provides students with a practical understanding of race, crime, law, and popular culture.
Notwithstanding profound changes in the law, policy, and the organization of policing, two constants exist, especially in relation to black people, brutality and racial prejudice. Examines the idea of police culture and discretion, their evolution, and their positive and negative roles in advancing racial equity and examines some recent examples of abuse of police power and also an array of possible solutions for police misconduct.
1 in every 100 adults serves time in Federal and State prisons and the current growth of imprisonment has been concentrated among poor minorities and are part of a circular process where the inside and outside of correctional facilities have become increasingly connected. Examines the development of the American penal system and its often-competing goals of justice and punishment and focuses on the urban social, cultural, political, and economic contexts of incarceration
Empathy, Forgiveness and Resilience (1 credit) Offers a unique opportunity to explore issues of crime and justice from the context of a correctional facility. Through the readings and dialogue, incarcerated students will be able to integrate their theoretical knowledge with lived experiences and will critically analyze and challenge the effects of parental incarceration on minor and adult children
Challenges the idea that convict slavery for blacks began with the 13th Amendment and locates the history in the experience of the struggles of blacks for freedom and equality before and after the Civil War. It links the current era of mass incarnation not to emancipation, but to the United States’ response to era of black equal rights resulting from the Civil Rights Movement.
Brings together formerly incarcerated persons through weekly panel discussions that engage critical topics around contemporary criminal justice reform and engages students through dialogue around enduring questions that keep students engaged with the course content beyond each virtual session. Each session includes a panel to guide the discussion. In a debate style format, students brake into small group rooms to triangulate information from required readings, directly impacted panel and personal insights.
Learn the basics of social justice inquiry. This will include the introduction to criminological theories, criminal justice policy, and critical race perspectives of criminal behaviors. Critical thinking and application of understandings will be at the forefront of the course.
Understand the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency in the context of real communities and social policies, integrating the many social factors that shape juvenile delinquency and its control (including race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, and sexuality). Offers a thorough mix of traditional and cutting-edge theories, research, and practices and deal with many difficult questions on juvenile delinquency that they will face in their careers and lives.
Examines how various forms of collective behavior (e.g., fads, panics, riots, and social movements) emerge. Employ diverse fields of social science, including sociology (social movements, organizational behavior, social networks) in understanding their view of social movements and the role they play in bringing forth social change and equality, particularly in the U.S. This course will specifically focus on the collective behaviors, collective actions, within social movements such as the Civil Rights to LGBT movement to Black Lives Matter movements
Hip-Hop music has long been at the forefront of modern protests and remains a vital element of the contemporary freedom struggle in general and is used to reflect on modern discussions of the criminal justice system that appear in essays, fiction, music, and poetry. Uses Hip-Hop music as a critical lens for interpreting the writings and to representing a range of ideas about race and criminal justice reform.
Taught by an Historian and by an Art Historian, this course is grounded in demonstrating that media, art, and images have been a formidable vehicle to lobby for social change in four critical moments in Black American history.
Explores the roots of contemporary Black Feminism in the late 70s and early 80s and its flowering into intersectional approaches to legal and criminal justice reform. Students will grapple with the unique tenets, challenges, and opportunities of radical Black feminism through both fictional and nonfictional texts. Students will engage in substantial, text-mediated dialogue and write weekly reflections, culminating in a careful articulation of how Black feminism can inform ongoing movements for criminal justice reform.
Examines black poets who used their art for social change starting with the Harlem Renaissance to the present. It examines the works of such poets as James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Sonia Sanchez, Haki Madhubuti, Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka, Nadine Marshall, and Amanda Gorman.
Examine and consider how issues of social class position in the United States intersect with potentials for social justice. Includes the history of labor activism in the United States and connections to the Civil Rights movement that are often rendered invisible in educational systems, social media and the current global wealth gap. Readings focus on a variety of multimodal texts to interrogate the rhetorical and practical effectiveness of social justice advocacy for economic equality.
Examines how art has been used as a form of social justice activism and political protest by black artists. It examines the historical and social contexts that supported various black art from the 19th century to the present, including visual culture, sculptors, landscape painters, daguerreotypists, portraiture, photographers, and performance art. Includes an examination of artists such as Henry O. Tanner, Jacob Lawrence, Carolyn Lawrence, Dindga McCannon, Carrie Mae Weems, Faith Ringgold and Kara Walker.
Explore criminal justice through the built environment. Address crime prevention, restorative justice, and the design of urban transformations of African American communities through a social equity lens. Learn non-western or historically criminalized marginalized cultures and traditions, how the built environment, and its forms of power shape inequality and understandings of race and identity. Research the power of space, structures of inequality in community development, design, and crime prevention tactics through mixed media and the arts.
Athenian tragedy and comedy and their performative contexts often reflect the cultural, economic, and political concerns and conflicts within the Athenian polis and between Athens and other communities of the Greek-speaking world. Artists of the African Diaspora have frequently translated, adapted, and re-envisioned these works as vehicles to represent aspects of their cultures and similarly comment on the concerns and conflicts within their communities and between their communities and external forces.
Faculty supervise and guide individual students directed readings, study and/or research in their areas of shared interests.
