Department of Social Science

About us

About the Site

All text and photos are copyrighted to the Department of Social Science at San Jose State University, 2006.  Faculty photos and cvs may be downloaded without permission, as long as they are reproduced exactly as they appear here, and author/writer credits are maintained.  For any other kind of use, please contact us at socs@email.sjsu.edu. 

This website was created in June of 2006 by Chicanas.com Consulting with design assistance from Professor Maria Alaniz, and administrative assistance from Gargi Chande.   Technical assistance was provided by Rex Ruff Web Construction.

The site code was validated as "XHTML 1.0 Transitional" and CSS in conformance with W3C guidelines.  

Accessibility

This site meets federal accessibility standards in compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and in conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).  We've done everything we can to make it usable for folks with disabilities.  If you have any further suggestions, please let us know at socs@email.sjsu.edu!

Accesskeys for site navigation are as follows (Windows, use Alt+accesskey; Mac, use Ctrl + accesskey):

1 - Home/Index
2 - Majors
3 - People
4 - News
5 - Curriculum
6 - Resources
7 - Handouts
8 - Contact

Also, if you need more information about disability resources at SJSU, please contact the Disability Resource Center

About the front image

The image on our front page is "The Library" by African-American artist Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000).  The original is tempera on fiberboard, located in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C.   Lawrence was a painter, printmaker, and muralist, and the first African-American artist to have his work displayed in major American museums.  By the end of his life, he had collected various honors including election into the National Institute of Arts & Letters (1965) and the American Academy of Arts & Letters; the NAACP Springarn Medal (1971); the National Medal of Arts (1990) and more than two dozen honorary degrees.

Lawrence was born in New Jersey and spent his teenage years in New York during the Harlem Renaissance; he was a regular in art classes at local community centers. His artwork includes detailed scenes of history and family life, drawn both from his own experiences, family members' experiences, and his extensive research in African American history. One of his first major works was a series of forty-one paintings about Haitian history and the life and death of Toussaint L'Overture; the series became the first African-American art to be displayed at a major American Museum (Baltimore Museum of Art) in 1938.  Other works included series' on heroes like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and John Brown, a series titled "Great Migration" which reflected the historical movement of African Americans from the rural south to the industrial cities of the North; and in the 1950s, a series titled "Struggle: From the History of the American People" emphasizing the role of "ordinary people of all races and heritage" (Gale bio).  You can read more about Lawrence here or visit this great online exhibit at the Whitney Museum .