Teaching

Judith Blau currently teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she is a Professor of Sociology and serves as the Chair of the Undergraduate Minor in Social and Economic Justice (SEJ), which she organized. She created the SEJ minor in 2003 to take a closer look at human rights, racial, ethnic, and fender equality, economic justice, democratic participation, sustainable development, diversity and peace. Another reason was so students who wanted to work in advocacy roles in nonprofit organizations, local communities or governmental organizations would have the opportunity to focus on topics that would later help them.

Dr. Blau’s favorite class to teach is Social and Economic Justice, which is the fundamental class for the SEJ minor. The texts she uses for this class include Human Rights: Concept and Context (Broadview Press, 2002) by Brian Orend and The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 1968) by Franz Fanon. She has also written the book Social Contracts and Economic Markets (New York: Plenum, 1993) and many other books about human rights, also one of her research interests is human rights. In this course Dr. Blau requires her students to participate in an APPLES (Assissting People in Planning Learning Experiences in Service) Service-learning Project. Her Philosophy behind service-learning is her belief that "learning and practice go hand in hand." APPLES is designed for students to actively attend to the needs of North Carolina Communities. Service-learning is used in calssrooms to enhance what is learned over the course of the semester through reflection in order to connect the service project to the course objectives. Along with APPLES, Dr. Blau assigns an art/poetry project in an effort to "promtoe utopian thinking in the class." Though hands on learning is an important aspect of her SEJ course, Dr. Blau strongly encourages discussion on the "universal needs, capabilities and rights" of humans to motivate critical thinking on "practices that maintain the status quo, inequality and oppression." Dr. Blau also giver her students a list of websites to help with the course work. The website topics include: The Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Uganda; The Freedom of Expression Institute, South Africa; Third World Networl, Africa (free trade); The Ethiopian Constitution; Artists for Peace, Justice and Civil Liberties; Musicians for Peace and Derechos Human Rights.

Other courses she teaches at UNC includes: Human Societies, Sociology of Politics, Citizenship, Sociological Theory, Human Ecology, Sociology of Culture, Formal Organizations and Bureaucracy, The City and Urbanization and The Labor Force. These courses are offered either at the undergraduate level or at the graduate level.

Resources:

Blau, Judith. “Curriculum Vitae.” January 2006. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 14 February 2007
http://www.unc.edu/~jrblau/CV-2006vnw.pdf

Blau, Judith. “Re: Memoir Project.” E-mail from Judith Blau. 3 April 2007.

“Course Descriptions for Undergraduates.” 2005. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for its Department of Sociology. 22 March, 2007 https://sociology.unc.edu/courses/programs/undergrad/coursedescriptions

“Graduate Courses.” 2005. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for its Department of Sociology. 22 March, 2007 http://sociology.unc.edu/programs/grad/courses

“Judith Blau: Professor, Chair Social and Economic Justice.” 2005. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Sociology (faculty page). 13 March 2007 http://sociology.unc.edu/directory/faculty/jb