Start your academic journey at Oxy early with this year's Humanities For Just Communities Virtual Summer Course!
Howdy, Tigers!
Welcome to the Occidental Community! We are so excited to welcome you to campus this Fall. We’re writing to invite you to consider joining the Humanities For Just Communities virtual summer course - a chance to get to know some of your fellow classmates and future professors, as well as to earn your first college credit over 4 weeks this summer, at no cost to you!
“Taking this course allowed me to practice analyzing sources and writing my initial responses before discussion. The supportive and encouraging feedback I got from the peer mentors (current Oxy students who served as teaching assistants) and from the professors eased my anxieties about the transition from high school to college.” - Oxy student who took the summer 2022 virtual course
The Humanities for Just Communities (HJC for short) is an exciting initiative that launched just last year. HJC is an academic program that introduces first-year students to the different ways the Humanities can advance social justice.
This summer’s virtual summer course is Core 101: Migration, Displacement, and Cultural Resilience, and will take place from July 10 - August 4, in 8 “modules,” 2 per week.
The course will introduce students to the ways the humanities disciplines study the migration and displacement of people. Each module will be led by a different faculty member, and you will have the chance to explore a wide range of topics, including:
- the transformative political activism of people of Asian descent who migrated to the United States
- the “Great Migrations” of six million African Americans who left the rural South in the first half of the 20th century
- how food has shaped the experiences and identities of migrant communities
- the connections between language, identity, and “home” for speakers of Spanish, Mandarin, and indigenous American languages in Los Angeles
Read the full course description here. If you are interested: Complete the discussion group preference form linked here by June 30th.
What did last year’s students have to say about the course?
- “The class material was so interesting and important, and I loved being able to work through our ideas with each other during discussion groups. This was exactly what I hoped college would be like!”
- “It was so great to be able to meet classmates and to interact with faculty before arriving on campus. It made me excited to immerse myself fully in my classes in the fall!”
- “I learned so much about how different scholars approach social justice and I was pushed to think about activism in a much more expansive, interdisciplinary way.”
If you have any questions, please email Prof. Upson-Saia at upsonsaia@oxy.edu.
We hope to see you this summer!
Prof. Upson-Saia
Co-Program Coordinator, Humanities for Just Communities initiative
David B. and Mary H. Gamble Professor of Religious Studies