In this course, you will examine what equity means and how it manifests within a community. You will identify causes of and solutions to equity issues by looking at systemic forces, power differentials, and implicit biases. You will hear directly from activists working for equitable communities, and you will consider how arts and culture are essential in building community, supporting development, and contributing to economic opportunity. In addition, you will investigate how the stories of a place are told by examining who gets to tell them. You will also look at how these stories advance group interests and consider what impacts the stories have.

Throughout this course, you will gain a basic understanding of major forms of inequity in the United States —economic, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, national origin, and religion. You will participate in several relevant discussions with peers, advancing your own andothers' knowledge of the issues, and work on a course journal, using multiple ways of learning to examine equity through different lenses. Your course experience will culminate in a multi-part course project, in which you will work on writing your own letter to the editor of a newspaper.