Peace and Justice Studies Minor

Peace and Justice Studies (PJS) is a multidisciplinary minor that explores the causes and nature of conflict and war, the connections between violence, terrorism, war and social life, and models of peace-building, healing, and reconciliation in the resolution and transformation of conflict.

Students who minor in Peace and Justice Studies are encouraged to explore opportunities relevant through fieldwork, service learning, internships, and study abroad.

What the Minor in Peace and Justice Studies Teaches

The Peace and Justice Studies minor teaches knowledge, attitudes, and skills that promote reflection on peace and peace-building. Focusing on connections between poverty, economics, state policy, environment, technology, war, and gender and ethnic relations, Peace and Justice Studies seeks to create a finely-tuned sensitivity to the causes of violence and injustice both domestically and abroad. Peace and Justice Studies also seeks to help students explore constructive and creative strategies for redressing injustices and reducing levels of violence.

Peace and Justice Studies is a multidisciplinary minor that explores the causes and nature of conflict and war, the connections between violence, terrorism, war and social life, and models of peacebuilding, healing and reconciliation in the resolution and transformation of conflict. Students who minor in Peace and Justice Studies are encouraged to explore opportunities relevant to Peace and Justice Studies through fieldwork, service learning, internships and study abroad.

Faculty across the campus contribute courses to the Peace and Justice Studies minor representing a wide variety of perspectives and methodologies.

Requirements for the minor are six courses:

One core course: PHIL 219, PHIL 222, PHIL 224, PHIL 226, or AFS/EDU 264 (or any course the Director approves)
At least two courses at the 200-level
At least two courses at the 300-level or above

If a Peace and Justice minor elects one of the Philosophy courses as their core course, they are exempted from the 100-level prerequisite in the Philosophy department. Of the courses taken beyond the core course, students are encouraged to take at least one with a global focus and one with a domestic focus. Students should consult this list of approved courses, or email the program director with a request to have another course count.

No more than two courses for the minor may be in the major field of study, or from any one particular discipline/department.

Minors have to create and implement a peace and/or justice related project on campus or in the wider community, and submit a report before they graduate.

Students who want to declare a Peace and Justice Studies minor should complete the Declaration of Minor form with the Director of Peace and Justice Studies and submit a one-page, single-spaced write-up explaining why they wish to be a minor and how the six chosen classes fit together.

Interested students should contact the Director of the program: Professor Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams (hwilliam@gettysburg.edu).

Minors are encouraged to join the Peace and Justice Minor Student Council, which plans the annual Peace and Justice Week and other events, and/or apply for the Maihan Wali Peace and Justice Studies Fellowship.

Learning Outcomes for the Peace and Justice Studies Minor

Students will be able to demonstrate knowledge of key issues, relevant research and essential background in topics in peace and justice studies, such as human rights, social justice, ethnic, racial and religious violence, terrorism, nonviolent strategies of resistance, conflict transformation, and restorative justice;
Students will understand and analyze from multiple perspectives the complex social and political realities that give rise to conflict, structural violence and war;
Students will demonstrate understanding of strategies available to address conflict and violence and promote conflict resolution and peacebuilding;
Students will engage with social justice issues as they are addressed in real-world contexts through internships, externships, study abroad, and immersion experiences.

Advisory Council

Dr. Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams, Daria L. and Eric J. Wallach Professorship of Peace and Justice Studies, and Associate Professor – Africana Studies, Director, Peace and Justice Studies, Affiliate, Education, Advisory Council Member, International and Global Studies, Public Policy, and Civil War Era Studies
Monica Ogra, Professor, Environmental Studies
Nathifa Greene, Assistant Professor, Philosophy
Cassie Hays, Associate Professor, Sociology
Ian Isherwood, Assistant Professor of War and Memory Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies/Civil War Era Studies
Katherine Mattson, Associate Director of Career Planning, Center for Career Engagement
Aisha Mershani, Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies/CIMS
Jeffrey Rioux, Director, Center for Public Service
Anne Douds, Professor, Public Policy
Megan Adamson Sijapati, Professor, Religious Studies
Paula Alejandra Trillo, Associate Professor, Biology
David Walsh, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies

Peace and Justice Studies Courses

The courses listed below are possible courses for inclusion in the Peace and Justice Studies minor. Courses not listed here may count toward the minor with permission. Please see one of the advising faculty for Peace and Justice Studies for additional information.

Africana Studies

AFS 130 Intro to African-American Studies
AFS 131 Intro to African Studies (Formerly AFS 230)
AFS 132 Intro to Caribbean Studies
AFS 215 Race, Language, and the American Media
AFS 221 Francophone African Women Writers: Breaking the Mold
AFS 224 African American Religions
AFS 225 The Haitian Diaspora in Fiction
AFS 236 Mapping Caribbean Identities
AFS 244 Jazz: African American Classical Music
AFS 246 Human Rights Policy and Practice in the Caribbean
AFS 247 History of African American Music
AFS 248 African American Women Writers
AFS 250 Topics in Africana Studies
AFS 251 Topics in Musicology: Global – Music of the Caribbean
AFS 264 Education for Social Change
AFS 267 Race, Gender & The Law
AFS 270 The Postcolonial Condition
AFS 274 Globalization & Its Discontents
AFS 290 Language, Race and Education
AFS 318 Africana Music: Juju to Hiphop
AFS 331 Africana Intellectual History
AFS 367 Black Men, White Law
AFS 375 Aid and Volunteering in Africa

Anthropology

ANTH 218 Islam and Women
ANTH 221 Language and Culture
ANTH 223 Indigenous Peoples and Globalization
ANTH 225 Food, Culture and Globalization
ANTH 227 Religion, Power, and Belief
ANTH 228 Cross-Cultural Gender Roles
ANTH 231 Gender and Change in Africa/Afro-Latin America
ANTH 233 Plural France
ANTH 239 African Modernities
ANTH 240 Modernity and Change in Asia/Pacific
ANTH 243 Conflict France and Change in Asia/Pacific (Conflict and Crisis in Contemporary France)
ANTH 245 Lang, Cult, Identity Mid East
ANTH 302 Human Rights through an Anthropological Lens
ANTH 304 Anthropology of Violence & Conflict
ANTH 345 Inequality in the Ancient World

Art History

ARTH 240 Arts of the African Diaspora
ARTH 245 Art of the Global Renaissance

Asian Studies

AS 261 Risk Society and Education in Fukushima
AS 404 War and Peace in Japanese Literature

Biology

BIO 256 Conservation Biology

Cinema and Media Studies

CIMS 215 Race, Language, and the American Media
CIMS 228 Feminism and Pornography
CIMS 260 Violence in the Media
CIMS 284 Arab Film

Classics

CLA 104 Classic Rhetoric & Contemporary Political Discourse
CLA 240 Gender & Sexuality in Ancient Greece
CLA 335 Warfare in the Ancient Mediterranean World
CLA 350 Democratic Labors in Athens and America

Civil War Era Studies

CWES 205 Intro to American Civil War
CWES 210 Civil War Memory: Race, Politics, and Commemoration
CWES 212 Narratives of Illness
CWES 215 Intro to War Studies
CWES 225 Cameras, Canvas & Cannon: Visual Culture of the Civil War
CWES 237 From Reconstruction to Black Lives Matter
CWES 245 Gettysburg to Charlottesville: Race in the American
CWES 310 War in the Nineteenth Century
CWES 320 Aftermath: The Experience of War and ‘Modern’ Memory
CWES 330 John Brown
CWES 337 Legacy of the Civil War
CWES 346 Women and the Civil War

Economics

ECON 212 African Economics History & Dev
ECON 213 East Asian Economic History & Dev
ECON 214 Latin American Economic History and Development
ECON 250 Economic Development
ECON 251 International Economics
ECON 255 Poverty & Disease in Undeveloped
ECON 301 Labor Economics
ECON 308 Political Economy
ECON 341 Environmental Economics

Education

EDUC 199 Social Foundations of Education
EDUC 201 Educational Psychology
EDUC 220 Urban Education
EDUC 261 Risk Society and Education in Fukushima
EDUC 264 Education for Social Change
EDUC 320 Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students
EDUC 333 Literacy as Agency: Politics, Pedagogies, & Possibilities of Literacy in the 21st Century
EDUC 377 Education Policy & Politics

English

ENG 224 Gender and Sexuality in 18th Century British Literature
ENG 235 Survey of African American Literature
ENG 241 Literature of the Civil War Era
ENG 243 Riot, Rebellion, Revolution: The Tradition of Protest in Nineteenth-Century US Literature
ENG 252 Century African American Literature
ENG 253 Images of Women in Literature
ENG 258 African American Women Writers
ENG 261 After Auschwitz: Literature of Witness
ENG 263 Voice and Visibility: African Americans and the Power of Spoken Word
ENG 265 U.S. Latino Voices
ENG 355 Radical American Women
ENG 362 LGBTQ African American Literature
ENG 366 Human Rights and Literature
ENG 382 Civil War in American Imagination
ENG 386 Rethinking Race & Nation
ENG 391 Feminine/Feminist Aesthetics

Environmental Studies

ES 121 Environmental Issues
ES 122 Climate Change and Disasters
ES 161 Human Geography
ES 165 Native American Environmental Issues
ES 242 Environmental Issues in Global Literature
ES 256 Conservation Biology
ES 333 Environmental Policy
ES 334 Global Environment and Development
ES 335 Gender & Environment

French

FREN 310 Revolutions: Political, Social and Cultural
FREN 334 Diversity in French Cinema
FREN 336 Immigrants and Young Ethnics

First-Year Seminars

FYS 102-3 The World’s Children
FYS 103 Natives on Film
FYS 105 Sustainability or Collapse
FYS 108-1 Policy Change through Agency and Activism
FYS 113 Hangin’s Too Good for ’em
FYS 113-1 Locked Up: Mass Incarceration In America
FYS 114 Propaganda, Persuasion and the Public Sphere: Democracy in an Age of Mass Media
FYS 114-3 Pursuing Justice: A hands-on approach to US legal History
FYS 116-2 Seeking Peace: Alternatives to Violence
FYS 117-3 The Economics of Poverty
FYS 118-4 Wicked Problems, Activism, and the Arts
FYS 120-3 What Would Smokey Say?
FYS 121 Clash of Cultures – Turkey & Germany
FYS 123-3 Work, Society, and Self
FYS 126-4 Clash: Navigating a Polarized World
FYS 130 Women’s Health & Sexuality
FYS 133 Gender & Politics in Latin America
FYS 135 Luck of the Irish? The Troubled State of Northern Ireland
FYS 143-2 Protest Music & Social Change in the American Experience
FYS 149-3 Black Superheroes in American Popular Culture
FYS 156 Separate and Unequal: An examination of Race, Gender and Economic Outcomes (Githinji)
FYS 156-2 Green Eggs & Gov’t. Cheese
FYS 160 After Apartheid: Memory, Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa
FYS 162-4 The Mathematics of Voting: Counting the Vote and Making Your Vote Count
FYS 164 War Cries: The German Experience in the 20th Century
FYS 165 Anarchism and the Anarchist
FYS 166-4 Crossing Borders: Immigration, Identity, and Development
FYS 167 The Pity of War (Formerly: Creating Peace: The Power of Storytelling, Rituals and Festivals)
FYS 167-2 Beyond Terrorism
FYS 170-2 September 11, 2001: Through a Sociological Lens
FYS 172 Gender in Science & Society
FYS 178-2 Voice of the Rebel in America
FYS 179 Language in Multicultural America
FYS 182 Understanding AIDS
FYS 183-4 Blood on the Moon: Literature and the American Civil War
FYS 197 The Myths and Realities of the Vietnam War
FYS 198-2 Tryin’ to find a way back home: An introduction to the literature and legacy of Homelessness in America

German Studies

GER 260 Media Violence/Violence in the Media
GER 265 Antisemitism and Jewish Responses in Lit and Film
GER 270 Transnational Writing and Film: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the New European Context
GER 285 European Jews: History, Holocaust, Future
GER 305 Modern Germany: Issues and Identity
GER 312 Cultural History from Hegel to Hitler
GER 335 Redefining German: Gender, Nation, Migration
GER 351 The German-Jewish Experience

History

HIST 103 Europe Africa Asia 1750–1900
HIST 208 Islamic History 600–1500
HIST 209 Women’s History Since 1500
HIST 219 Europe Since 1945
HIST 226 The Birth of a Deadly “Boy”: The History and Science of the Atomic Bombings of Japan
HIST 238 African American History: A Survey
HIST 244 American Military History
HIST 245 Gender and the American Civil War
HIST 248 Poverty and Welfare in American History
HIST 280 Constructions of Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World
HIST 318 Europe and the Two World Wars
HIST 323 Gender in Modern Japan
HIST 334 Law & Society in US History
HIST 339 From Old South to New South
HIST 342 Revolutionary America
HIST 345 Civil War
HIST 346 Slavery and Emancipation in the Atlantic World
HIST 350 The Modern Freedom Black Struggle in America
HIST 351 Social Protest in the Nineteenth Century
HIST 361 The Mexican Revolution
HIST 364 Social Difference in Brazilian History
HIST 373 History of Sub-Sahara Africa in the Twentieth Century
HIST 374 Protest Movements in South Africa & the US
HIST 379 U.S.-Middle East 1776–1979
HIST 416 Spanish Inquisition
HIST 418 Sem: Nazism
HIST 421 Sem: The U.S. and World War II
HIST 422 Sem: The Pacific War
HIST 424 Race on Trial

Health Sciences

HS 322 Global Health

IAC

IAC 400 Globalization (Bohrer)

Interdisciplinary Studies

IDS 206 Native American Studies
IDS 216 Introduction to War Studies
IDS 217 American Civil War on Film
IDS 229 The Longest Hatred: Antisemitism & Anti-Judaism
IDS 243 Protest Music & Social Change in the American Experience
IDS 252 Youth and New Media in the M.E.
IDS 255 Science, Technology, and Nuclear Weapons
IDS 322 Public Policy Seminar: Urban Education
IDS 464 Senior Project (in certain cases)

Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies

LAS 220 The Dictator Novel
LAS 223 Mapping Caribbean Identities
LAS 231 Gender and Change in Africa/Afro-Latin Amer
LAS 262 Social Dev. of Latin America
LAS 265 U.S. Latino Voices
LAS 268 Gender and Sexuality in Latino/a Cinema
LAS 300 Sexuality as Political Discourse, Latin America
LAS 304 Film and Revolution in Latin America
LAS 331 Reinventing Latin American Societies
LAS 361 The Mexican Revolution
LAS 364 Slavery and Society in Brazilian History (formerly Social Difference in Brazilian History)

Management

MGT 303 Systems Thinking
MGT 332 Organizations and Society
MGT 335 Negotiation & Conflict Management
MGT 338 White Collar Crime in the 21st Century
MGT 365 Human Resources
MGT 395 Ethics

Music

MUS 251 Topics in Musicology: Global – Music of the Caribbean
MUS 318 Africana Music: Juju to Hiphop
MUS CLAS 149 Social Foundations of Music Education
MUS CLAS 321 Secondary Music Ed Methods

Philosophy

PHIL 105 Contemporary Moral Issues
PHIL 107 Environmental Ethics
PHIL 131 Bioethics
PHIL 215 Latin American and Caribbean Philosophy
PHIL 218 Gender and Identity
PHIL 219 Philosophy of Peace and Nonviolence
PHIL 222 Philosophical Perspectives on Justice
PHIL 224 Philosophy & Human Rights
PHIL 226 Philosophy of Resistance
PHIL 227 Beyond Terrorism
PHIL 230 Ethics
PHIL 240 World Philosophy
PHIL 246 Philosophy of Theravada Buddhism
PHIL 247 Philosophy of Race
PHIL 328 Deliberative Democracy
PHIL 338 Philosophy of Law

Political Science

POL 221 The Politics of Public Policy
POL 225 American Constitutional Law
POL 228 Race & Politics
POL 252 North-South Dialogue
POL 253 National and Ethnic Conflict
POL 270 Government and Politics in China
POL 275 Latin American Politics
POL 321 Gender in American Politics (Formerly POL 301 Gender & American Politics)
POL 322 Civil Rights & Liberties
POL 323 Religion and Politics in the United States
POL 347 Global Conflict Management
POL 351 Political Economy of Armed Conflict
POL 363 Politics of Developing Areas
POL 370 Continuing Issues in Turkey
POL 382 Feminist Theory in Amer Pol
POL 383 The Holocaust and Modern Political Thought
POL 404 Capstone – Comparative Politics: Contemporary Democracies
POL 412 Women and the Political Economy of Development