Motivation to Teach Social Action:
My courses center experiential learning, community engagement, and public scholarship, particularly around race, gender, and the criminal legal system. I am interested in this institute because it offers a structured social action campaign model that could help me further refine how students move from analysis to action. I am especially interested in learning strategies for guiding students through institutional change efforts in ways that are ethical, sustainable, and community inclusive. This training would help me build on work I am already doing – e.g. creating assignments that allow students creative freedom and agency – and strengthen how I support students in translating critical analysis to real-world change.
Course Description:
This course examines how race and racism shape the criminal legal system, including policing, courts, incarceration, and media representation. Students analyze historical and contemporary racial inequalities while exploring how policies and institutional practices impact communities that are often marginalized based on race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic status.
Because the course is taught every semester, it offers a consistent opportunity to integrate a social action campaign that connects classroom learning to real-world change.
Taught By:
Breea Willingham
Associate Professor
Sociology & Criminology
University of North Carolina Wilmington
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