Justice Studies Minor

The undergraduate minor in Justice Studies (JUST) offers students the opportunity to integrate social sciences, humanities, and law in the empirical and theoretical study of legal, political, and economic systems of justice. The Justice Studies curriculum is designed to equip students with a comprehensive but contextualized understanding of justice and injustice from diverse perspectives, including the importance of race, class, gender, sexuality, ecology, and indigeneity in struggles over the meaning and delivery of justice and injustice. This entails a consideration of how precarious populations in local and global contexts often articulate claims to justice that challenge a status quo. To study the politics of justice is to study the sociopolitical forces, structures of power, cultural rhetorics, and historical roots of conflict, harm, and inequality while contextualizing the role of social movements, grassroots organizing, and legal tactics in local to global struggles for a more just world.

The JUST Minor is intended as an additional study for undergraduate students who are concurrently enrolled in a degree program at the University of Tennessee. Students will select their courses from a menu of curated courses from a variety of different departments and programs. Degree programs that might pair well with the JUST Minor are Africana Studies, Anthropology, English, Geography and Sustainability, Global Studies, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religious Studies, Sociology (and Criminology), Women, Gender, and Sexuality Program, and many more. Applicants to the JUST undergraduate minor must submit a letter of application and record of coursework to the Program Chair of Justice Studies.

Campus: Knoxville

Credit Hours Required

The Justice Studies minor requires the completion of a minimum of 15 credit hours

Minor Requirements

To earn a Minor in Justice Studies, students are required to 1) take the core, JUST 200-Foundations of Justice Studies, 2) select two courses from the Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations set of courses, and 3) select two courses from the Justice in Historical and Contempoary Contexts set of courses. Completion of the Minor also requires an online exit survey for program assessment purposes.

A maximum of 6 credits can overlap between the JUST Minor and the home discipline of the student, as approved by the program director. Courses for the Minor must be completed with a grade of “C” or better. Depending upon a student’s undergraduate program of study, prerequisite courses may be needed in order to complete the requirements of this Minor.

JUST Core for Minor

JUST 200 - Foundations in Justice Studies 3 Credit Hours

Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations

Select two (2) courses:

AFST 359 - African American Intellectual Thought 3 Credit Hours
AFST 425 - Black Feminist Theory 3 Credit Hours
ANTH 414 - Political Anthropology 3 Credit Hours
ANTH 419 - Anthropology of Human Rights 3 Credit Hours
ANTH 423 - Feminist Anthropology 3 Credit Hours *
ENGL 494 - Cultural Rhetorics 3 Credit Hours *
GEOG 466 - Political Ecology 3 Credit Hours
HIUS 303 - History of Capitalism in America and Beyond 3 Credit Hours *
JUST 455 - Law and Society 3 Credit Hours
PHIL 382 - Philosophy of Feminism 3 Credit Hours *
PHIL 383 - Philosophy of Disability 3 Credit Hours *
PHIL 390 - Philosophical Foundations of Democracy 3 Credit Hours *
PHIL 391 - Social and Political Philosophy 3 Credit Hours *
PHIL 392 - Philosophy of Law 3 Credit Hours *
PHIL 441 - Global Justice and Human Rights 3 Credit Hours *
POLS 330 - Law in American Society 3 Credit Hours
POLS 430 - United States Constitutional Law: Sources of Power and Restraint 3 Credit Hours *
POLS 431 - United States Constitutional Law: Civil Rights and Liberties 3 Credit Hours *
SOCI 342 - Globalization and Justice 3 Credit Hours
SOCI 344 - Political Sociology 3 Credit Hours *
SOCI 361 - Environmental Justice 3 Credit Hours *
SOCI 455 - Law and Society 3 Credit Hours *
SOCI 456 - Punishment and Society 3 Credit Hours *
WGS 382 - Philosophy of Feminism 3 Credit Hours *

Justice in Historical and Contemporary Contexts

Select two (2) courses:

AFST 322 - Race, Gender, and Medicine 3 Credit Hours
ANTH 421 - Refugees and Displaced People 3 Credit Hours
ANTH 422 - Anthropology of Global Inequality 3 Credit Hours
ANTH 424 - Queer Anthropology 3 Credit Hours
ANTH 425 - Humanitarianism 3 Credit Hours
ANTH 426 - Decolonization 3 Credit Hours
ANTH 489 - Forensic Science and Human Rights 3 Credit Hours
GEOG 421 - Maps, Society, Power 3 Credit Hours
GEOG 442 - Urban Spaces and Urban Society 3 Credit Hours *
GEOG 445 - Cities in a World System 3 Credit Hours *
GEOG 462 - Geographies of Race and Racism 3 Credit Hours
HIUS 365 - Food and Power in U.S. History 3 Credit Hours *
HIUS 374 - History of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States 3 Credit Hours
HIUS 376 - African American Womenʼs History from Slavery to the Present 3 Credit Hours
HIUS 379 - African American Experience from Colonial Period to Civil War 3 Credit Hours
HIUS 380 - African American Experience from Civil War to the Present 3 Credit Hours
HIUS 382 - Appalachian History 3 Credit Hours *
HIUS 444 - History of the South 3 Credit Hours *
JUST 400 - Special Topics in Justice Studies 3 Credit Hours
JUST 461 - Appalachian Justice Research Lab 3 Credit Hours
JUST 492 - Internship in Justice Studies 1-15 Credit Hours
JUST 493 - Independent Study in Justice Studies 1-15 Credit Hours
PHIL 441 - Global Justice and Human Rights 3 Credit Hours *
POLS 414 - Gender and Politics 3 Credit Hours
PSYC 434 - Psychology of Gender 3 Credit Hours *
PSYC 471 - Psychology of Prejudice 3 Credit Hours *
REST 343 - Religion, Nature, and Ethics 3 Credit Hours
REST 350 - Black Power to Black Lives Matter in African American Religious Thought 3 Credit Hours
REST 386 - Voices of the Holocaust 3 Credit Hours *
SOCI 345 - Social Movements 3 Credit Hours *
SOCI 353 - Criminal Justice 3 Credit Hours *
SOCI 411 - Police and Society 3 Credit Hours
SOCI 415 - Visual Criminology 3 Credit Hours
SOCI 433R - Participatory Action Research 3 Credit Hours
SOCI 449 - Youth Justice 3 Credit Hours
SOCI 452 - Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice 3 Credit Hours
SOCI 453 - Gender and Crime 3 Credit Hours *
SOCI 454 - Restorative Justice 3 Credit Hours
SOCI 461 - Immigration Politics and Policies 3 Credit Hours
SOCI 460 - Capitalism and Racism 3 Credit Hours
SOCI 463 - Community, Sustainability and Justice 3 Credit Hours
WGS 322 - Race, Gender, and Medicine 3 Credit Hours
WGS 340 - Gender, Politics, and the Law 3 Credit Hours
WGS 383 - Feminism and the Environment 3 Credit Hours *
WGS 434 - Psychology of Gender 3 Credit Hours *
WGS 453 - Gender and Crime 3 Credit Hours *

Non-Course Requirements

Completion of online assessment module (exit survey) upon completion of all other certificate requirements.

Footnote

* Meets Volunteer Core Requirement.

Undergraduates

Graduate Students