Bachelor of Arts with Major or Minor in Diversity and Social Justice Studies

About this programme

The Diversity and Social Justice Studies program at the University of Prince Edward Island explores scholarship and theories about identity categories (gender, sexuality, race, etc) and their relationship to power and knowledge. Through core and cross-listed courses students examine identity as a category of analysis, investigate the construction of social differences, and explore the impact that these considerations have on social structures and practices and knowledge production. Diversity and Social Justice Studies recognizes that questions of social identity make a difference to people's lives; it researches how taking identities into account changes what we know and can know about social formations; it explores the importance of "differences" between people, recognizing that "difference" is often about (unequal) power relations; it investigates how identity markers such as gender, race, sexuality, (dis) abilities, national identity, etc. make a difference to people’s positioning in the world and thus also to what a more just world can look like; and it creates new scholarship that acknowledges the difference that considerations of identity make to how we know and can act in the world. Diversity and Social Justice Studies (DSJS) was named as one of UPEI's three "standout programs" in the 2024 Maclean's Universities Rankings! Diversity and Social Justice Studies is a self-reflexive project — that is, in addition to generating new knowledge that takes social identities into consideration, it also always asks questions about the construction of those categories of ident