Social Justice and Cultural Studies Major

As a Social Justice and Cultural Studies major, you will be able to articulate an understanding of the dynamics of power, history, and representation that form culture and produce patterns of inequity. This awareness is critical for engaging and networking within our intercultural society and creating a foundation to develop your career in a changing world.

Social Justice and Cultural Studies Tracks

To further develop your vocational path, the Social Justice and Cultural Studies major has five tracks, promoting careers in law, policy, civil and human rights, refugee issues, art activism in graphic design, documentary film, creative writing and editing, future MA in education with a foundation in race/ethnicity/gender/sexuality class issues, social work and health/medicine policies, mediation and activism in political or non-governmental organizations.

We encourage you to explore these links to vocational tracks:

Apply to the Major

You may enter this major during your first quarter at SPU. Entrance after your first quarter requires only good academic standing (2.0 or higher SPU cumulative GPA). Consult the undergraduate catalog for complete information on how and when to enter and what you must do to complete the program.

Study abroad opportunities

Kim Segall and reflection outside a building

How Professor Kim Segall’s work in Iraq and South Africa shapes her approach to social justice

Kimberly Segall is professor of English and Cultural Studies, and co-director of the Social Justice and Cultural Studies major. She sees stories as an important route to intercultural understanding, for herself and for her students. Read her story.

“One writes out of one thing only — one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”