Learning Outcomes
The certificate provides students with the following competencies:
- Increased knowledge about selected history of social movements, how those movements emerged, and the impacts those movements had on policy, populations, the environment, the arts, and culture.
- The ability to explore through coursework how the intersections of geography, race, class, gender, sexuality, health, economics, and history create networks of privilege and oppression across the globe, and to reflect on situations they encounter in art and community engagement work.
- The ability to explore the application of the role of performing arts in community and society throughout history and in established creative community engagement, social justice-based projects, and/or scholarly work, and how that focus can be applied to interdisciplinary social justice work.
- The ability to read, write, listen, and act through social justice coursework in order to understand how conditions are created for change on the local, regional, and national level historically, ethically, politically, and personally.
- The articulation of a vision that starts to inform their work, future project planning, and thinking about the arts and community that includes their ability to creatively conceptualize and articulate their personal goals while balancing the needs of community partners in performance, social, and global contexts in relation to existing philosophies and theories, and to apply their vision to creative or scholarly engagement work.
The undergraduate Certificate in Social Justice and the Performing Arts requires a minimum of 21 s.h. of coursework, including at least 18 s.h. earned at the University of Iowa or in approved study abroad courses. Students must maintain a grade-point average of at least 2.00 in coursework for the certificate. Coursework in the certificate may not be taken pass/nonpass.
The certificate may be earned by any student admitted to the University of Iowa who is not enrolled in a UI graduate or professional degree program. Undergraduate to Graduate (U2G) students may earn the certificate when the undergraduate classification is primary.
Students complete two foundation courses, one creative practice and skill-building course, three background courses, and one capstone course. They must meet with the certificate director or an area of study advisor every semester to discuss their course selections and plan for the capstone course.
Students who wish to count a course not listed in the certificate program of study, including study abroad courses, may submit a request for approval to the certificate director. Any course submitted for approval must address social justice themes.
Some of the courses have prerequisites; students must complete all of a course's prerequisites before they may register for a course. Some of these courses also have specific restrictions, such as courses being open only to certain majors.
The Certificate in Social Justice and the Performing Arts requires the following coursework.
Foundation Courses
Course List
Course # |
Title |
Hours |
| |
THTR:3615 | Action! Engage! Art! Creative Placemaking for the Public Good | 3 |
SJUS:1001 | Introduction to Social Justice | 3 |
Creative Practice and Skill Building
Performing arts students must take a course outside their major or minor area of study to build partnerships across disciplines.
Course List
Course # |
Title |
Hours |
| |
THTR:1411 | Comedy and Society | 3 |
THTR:3421 | Performing Autobiography | 3 |
THTR:3630 | Special Topics in Theatre Arts (when topic is devised theatre project: social justice and collaborative performance or the musical as vehicle for social change) | 3 |
THTR:3895 | Performance, Art, and New Technologies in Society | 3 |
THTR:6310 | Special Topics in Playwriting (when topic is site specific performances and playwriting) | 3 |
DANC:1150 | Brazilian Culture and Carnival | 3 |
DANC:1412 | The Arts in Performance | 3 |
DANC:3600 | Art, Feminist Practice, and Social Justice | 3 |
EDTL:2670 | Peacebuilding, Singing, and Writing in a Prison Choir | 3 |
MUS:2800 | Digital Arts: An Introduction | 3 |
Background Courses
Performing arts students may take only one background course in their major or minor area of study. All students select 9 s.h. (three courses) from the following emphasis areas.
The Environment and Ecological Justice
Course List
Course # |
Title |
Hours |
THTR:6310 | Special Topics in Playwriting | 3 |
AFAM:4770 | Environmental Justice | 3 |
ANTH:3103 | Environment and Culture | 3 |
GEOG:3300 | Envisioning Future Worlds: Sustainable Development and Its Alternatives | 3 |
RHET:3700 | Advocacy and Sustainability: Crafting Stories of People, Place, and Resilience | 3 |
SJUS:1046 | Environmental Politics in India | 3 |
Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies
Course List
Course # |
Title |
Hours |
THTR:2405 | Staging Americans: U.S. Cultures Through Theatre and Performance | 3 |
THTR:3430 | Women on Stage | 3 |
GWSS:3282 | Women and Power in U.S. History Since the Civil War | 3 |
GWSS:3600 | Art, Feminist Practice, and Social Justice | 3 |
MUS:4320 | Music and Gender | 3 |
SJUS:2500 | Love, War, Activism: Stories About Women from Across the World | 3 |
Global and Transnational Studies
Course List
Course # |
Title |
Hours |
THTR:2320 | Playwriting in a Global World | 3 |
THTR:6310 | Special Topics in Playwriting (when topic is cross-cultural collaboration: theatre and peace keeping, or theatre in conflict zones, or theatre and activism) | 3 |
DANC:2060 | Dance and Society in Global Contexts | 3 |
DANC:2085 | Introduction to African Caribbean Dance Practices | 3 |
GWSS:2650 | Global Reproduction | 3 |
HRTS:3906 | Global Crises and Human Rights | 3 |
MUS:1310 | World Music | 3 |
SJUS:3250 | Literature and Social Justice | 3 |
Race and Ethnicity in the U.S.
Course List
Course # |
Title |
Hours |
THTR:2405 | Staging Americans: U.S. Cultures Through Theatre and Performance | 3 |
AFAM:1241 | The Soundtrack of Black America | 3 |
AFAM:3053 | The Civil Rights Movement | 3 |
AFAM:3600 | Digitizing Blackness | 3 |
COMM:2054 | Movements, Protest, Resistance | 3 |
DANC:2065 | Performing Power/Performing Protest: The Body, Identity, and the Image | 3 |
HIST:3232 | History of American Inequality | 3 |
MUS:1009 | Jazz Cultures in America and Abroad | 3 |
MUS:1303 | Roots, Rock, and Rap: A History of Popular Music | 3 |
MUS:4350 | Advanced Jazz History | 3 |
MUS:4360 | Jazz Matters | 3 |
SJUS:3250 | Literature and Social Justice | 3 |
SJUS:3415 | Latina/o/x Protest, Movement, Resistance | 3 |
Capstone Course
Students submit a capstone project plan in the semester before they enroll in the capstone course.