Honors College

Health & Society, Policy & Social Justice 2025-2026

Overworked, Underpaid, and Burned Out: How Work Sustains Health Inequities

Want a good life? Societal messages tell us to study hard and work harder, but this truism ignores the realities of economic inequality, climate change, and increasing corporate power. This praxis lab will examine how work is an often-overlooked institution that helps sustain unfair systems, health inequities, and environmental injustice—but also one that could be leveraged for increased social justice. Students will learn about work as a social construct and as a cause of health, ill-health, and health inequities. They will explore work’s ties to major challenges of our time. They’ll understand how to locate both the roots of problems and the shoots of future possibilities in the history of work in the United States. Students will leave this praxis lab equipped with the knowledge that work is something they have the right and responsibility to influence and the vision, knowledge, language, and experience to shape work that serves our collective interests into the future.