"Teaching social justice across the curriculum: A Symposium"
Bruce Erickson, History

According to its Mission Statement, “Le Moyne College seeks to prepare its members for leadership and service in their personal and professional lives to promote a more just society.”

The College can provide programs that address the goal of promoting a more just society but faculty members face a more difficult challenge. We must find ways to integrate social justice into lesson plans on a day-to-day basis. This symposium provides an avenue for five faculty members to share ideas and strategies for teaching social justice.

Presenters:

Carmen Giunta (Chemistry/Physics), "Social Justice Issues in Selected Natural Science Core Courses"

Natural sciences are not concerned, as disciplines, with questions of social justice. That does not mean, however, that natural scientists are not or should not be concerned with such questions. Methods and knowledge from natural science can be used to inform debate and decision-making around many issues of social justice. In this presentation, I will describe opportunities for raising such issues within the natural science core courses I teach, “Scientific Thought” and “Energy and the Environment.” The relationship between science and society is part of the subject matter proper of “Scientific Thought,” and that relationship naturally includes matters of value and justice. “Energy and Environment” treats several topics whose implications are global. Social justice aspects of such topics include the relationship between energy use and economic activity and the potential effects of global warming on rich and poor nations.

Bruce A. Erickson, (History), "Teaching Social Justice and Fulfilling the Basic History Requirements” 

Mary MacDonald (Religious Studies), "Religion and Globalization: Developing a Course for Justice"

shall report on a senior seminar on Globalization and Religion (REL403) which I taught for the first time in fall of 2005 and shall teach again in the fall of 2006.  My hope is to make justice issues more prominent in the course when it is taught for the second time.  The course encourages seniors to think about the role they can play in promoting justice and underlines the importance of staying abreast of global affairs.  The Course Description follows:
The peoples of the world have increasingly come to live as a single social unit.  The historical process by which this has come about is referred to as globalization.  Religions have contributed to, and been affected by, globalization. While some religions aspire to become global, today many religious leaders decry globalization, and in particular the global economy, for forcing developing countries to become severely dependent on industrial and post-industrial nations.  The seminar discusses the concept of globalization, investigates the globalization of religions, and pursues ethical issues concerning globalization. A case study approach encourages students to work collaboratively on topics of interest and to make the seminar a capstone experience in which they may integrate their work across the curriculum.

Fred Glennon (Religious Studies), "Experiential Learning and Social Justice Action"

My presentation will be in a poster and it is entitled, "Experiential Learning and Social Justice Action."  In an attempt to discern an appropriate way to enable students to learn about social justice, I devised an experiential learning social justice action project that required students to identify and research an injustice, and to do a minimum of 10 hours of action to address that injustice.  I used a qualitative methodological approach to document the results.  I did eventually write this up in a journal article that was published and I will bring copies of the article for people who might be interested in reading about it.

Mario Saenz (Philosophy), "Philosophy’s Empire and the World of the Other"

In this presentation, I will try to limit myself to a description of the development and teaching of an Integral Honors course in Guatemala (Honors 402—The World of the Other) in 2002 and 2003:
This is an interdisciplinary course on the contemporary world that addresses philosophical, social, religious, literary, and scientific issues from diverse perspectives, within a context of modernization, underdevelopment, and dependency. Some of its objectives have been:
* To acquaint the student with the lives and experiences of people in another culture.
* To help the student appreciate the artistic and literary achievements of Indigenous and Latin American artists.
* To sensitize the student to the effects of globalization in a poor country.
* To help the student reflect on the consequences of an unequal distribution of wealth.
The course includes a large number of readings and classroom hours, of course, but it will emphasize discussion and observation because of the nature of the course: The country itself and our experiences have been our most important texts. Students are encouraged to pursue personal interests (e.g., the study of music; critical examination of Latin American literature, for instance, magical realism, one of the better known products of Latin American literature; huipil weaving; pottery; ecological study, indigenous cosmovisions; archeological exploration), as they weave them with issues of globalization and postcoloniality in the contemporary world.  When we came back to Le Moyne, and as part of the grade, students were expected to organize a conference on Guatemala and give a presentation to the Le Moyne community on some aspect of their studies/experiences/compositions done/lived/created for this course.