Social Justice and Community Studies Program
Why study Social Justice?
The Social Justice & Community Studies Major, Honours and Minor Programs offer students the intersectional knowledge necessary for problem solving, organizational work, and public deliberation in a range of complex social issues and will prepare students and professionals for a wide variety of future opportunities.
The Saint Mary’s approach
Studying Social Justice & Community Studies at Saint Mary's University offers students and professionals strong interdisciplinary training to promote social responsibility. It does this by fostering intersectional knowledge and community engagement around issues including: gender and sexuality, Indigenous-settler relations, settler colonialism, citizenship and migration status, urban politics and histories, and social organizing and organizational theory.
The goal is to build stronger institutional and community relationships with and between diverse Indigenous peoples, African Nova Scotians, immigrant peoples, and historically settled white Nova Scotians and Canadians. Among the key ways in which SJCS at Saint Mary's University builds intersectional knowledge and relationships is by fostering mutual engagement between community members, the university, and the city, and mobilizing social justice and community work on and off campus.
Sample Courses Offered:
- Canadian Society and Social Justice: Examine social justice perspectives on Canadian society and state policies past and present. Possible questions include: What does it mean to be Canadian? What are the encounters involved in how the Canadian nation and identity come to be?
- Climate Disaster and Social Justice: Study the basic science of climate change, learn the history of climate activism, connect environmental harm and capitalism, and reflect on what this means for our near future. The focus of the course is on Black and Indigenous disproportionate community impacts, land care, and resistance to the “resourcification” of the earth.
- Racialization and Social Control: Examine key theoretical texts and empirical studies on the construction, policing, and regulation of the Other institutionally, individually, and systemically. Topics include eugenics and temperance movements, prison regulation, racial profiling, policing of Indigenous and Black communities, and the casting out of Muslims from Western law and politics.
- Gender and Law: Examine and analyze how the social construction of femininity, masculinity and non-binary gender intersect with other dimensions of identity and power to shape law.
Future career opportunities:
- Researcher or Policy analyst
- Journalist
- Social worker or Counselor
- Educator
- Politician or Policy Analyst
- Governmental or non-governmental employee
- Socially responsible scientist or business owner
- Lawyer or legal advocate
__________________________________________________________________