Civil Discourse & Social Change

  • CDSC banner with logo -1128px

Teaching Commons


Spring 2022 Events


5th Annual Student Social Justice Conference

Exterminate all the Brutes (March 3, 2022)


Fall 2021 Events


Converging Currents: Intergenerational Dialogues in Organizing (November 30, 2021)

COVID-19 and Vulnerable Communities: Structural Inequality and the Pandemic (October 13, 2021)


Spring 2021 Events


Teach-In on Anti-Asian American Violence (April 16, 2021)

Tsuru for Solidarity and Detention Watch Network: Organizing Across Generations and Across Communities (March 10, 2021)

Pioneering Asian Americans in Media (February 23, 2021)


 Fall 2020 Events


Southeast Asian American Journeys: 45 Years of Resilience, Advocacy, and Organizing (November 17, 2020)

CDSC 10th Anniversary, 2010-2020: Ten Years of Vision, Struggle, and Movement Building (October 21, 2020)


 Fall 2017 Events


Media Literacy and Environmental Justice (November 9, 2017)

  • Jeanine M. Canty, ed., Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women's Voices

Susan Burton: Activists & Abolitionists Fighting Against Mass Incarceration (September 21, 2017)

  • Recommended Reading and Multimedia Materials:

    • Susan Burton and Cari LynnP, Becoming Ms. Burton (The New Press, 2017).

    • Martha D. Escobar, Captivity Beyond Prisons: Criminalization Experiences of Latina (Im)migrants (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016).

    • Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (New York: The New Press, 2010).

    • Marta López-Garza, “Formerly Incarcerated Women Speak Out,” Journal of Progressive Human Services. 27: 2, 2016.

    • Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Susan Burton Interview

    • Democracy Now -- "Repairing the Damage from the Drug War"

    • Tavis Smiley Interviews Susan Burton

    • Jenna Loyd et al (eds) 2002. Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders and Global Crisis 

    • Juanita Díaz-Cotto, 2006. Chicana Lives and Criminal Justice: Voices from El Barrio. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    • Luana Ross, “Native women, Mean Spirited Drugs and Punishing Policies,” 2005. Social Justice. Vol 32, no 3; 54-62.

    • Peggy McIntosh. 1998. “White Privilege, Color, and Crime: A Personal Account, from Images of Color, Images of Crime” by Coramae Richey Mann and Marjorie S. Zatz. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company, Los Angeles, C

    • Stormy Ogden, 2005. A Native Woman & Former Prisoner Speaks Out, Political Research Associates, http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/overview/ogden_native.html 

    • Bill Moyers, “Incarceration Nation,” Moyers & Company (PBS), December 20, 2013.

    • Democracy Now – “Buck v Bell, Inside the Scotus”  (aired 3/17/16)


For resources from past semesters, please visit the Teaching Commons Archive.