The DJS cluster is phenomenal, and I would highly highly recommend it to anyone interested in the humanities or social issues. It does NOT require any knowledge/interest in data science or statistics. Every single lecture I'm left in awe of the discussions and examples in class. For example, felt like I learned more about the horrors of slavery in 1 lecture than in my entire 12 years of school. Undoubtedly, I feel the cluster captured the complexity of using data to understand social issues and fight for justice; I absolutely love this cluster course, it has completely changed my perspective on so many things around our daily lives that I take for granted.

Workload-wise it was my easiest class by far; there is no homework or tests aside from a short discussion post each week and 3-4 writing assignments each quarter.

Prof Williams was a truly incredible professor who certainly improved my understanding of the content. At the beginning of every class, she provides a helpful overview of the topic we are exploring, and how it fit into the themes in data, justice, and society -- this was extremely helpful for staying oriented during class and discussions of the week. Prof Williams' passion for gender studies and feminist theory really intersected with many of the themes we discussed in the cluster, and I was consistently intrigued by the connections she made. Sometimes, though, these concepts and theories were difficult to understand and I would appreciate if we spent more time building them up and understanding feminist and philosophical justice theory.