Faculty at Bethany College, Kansas found that when engaging with controversial topics like social justice, students needed lower-stakes spaces to think--and history and writing, together, provided these needed spaces. When taught in combination, these two subject areas prompted engagement and self-reflection, and the interdisciplinary synergy provided a personal sanctuary for students. The formal writing assignment that emerged from students' historical reading assignments forced them to identify with someone whose circumstances they could not have experienced themselves. The history-focused essay gave students experience in writing about race, gender, or class and allowed them to practice negotiating a controversial topic without worrying about offending their classmates. The writing assignment offered an important space for students to piece together and make sense of the readings, the discussions, their peers' experiences, and their own reactions. By the end of the semester, students seemed to see that social justice has implications--that a socially just system both includes them and requires something of them.