Social Thought & Polic. Econ 491H - STPEC Focus Seminar I

A four credit honors seminar for senior STPEC students who have completed STPEC 391H with a grade of C or better. Seminar topic changes each semester. Fulfills the STPEC Senior Seminar requirement for STPEC students.

Open to Senior and Junior STPEC majors only. Pre Req: STPEC 391H w/C "Politics" is much more than just elections and voting: political action often employs other strategies, from sit-ins, boycotts, strikes, and divestment campaigns to occupations of workplaces and public squares. Why do people engage in such forms of resistance? Why do social movements choose the strategies that they do? And what makes movements effective? Scholars and activists have offered many different answers to these questions. This seminar surveys these debates, drawing from a range of theoretical, historical, and contemporary perspectives on mass-based resistance. Thematic case studies will include abolitionist, labor, civil rights, peasant, student, feminist, LGBTQ, antiwar, anti-imperialist, indigenous autonomy, and environmentalist movements. We will also consider some of the forces that mobilize in opposition to these movements. Geographically, cases will draw from the United States, Latin America, Egypt, South Africa, Germany, and elsewhere. The second half of the semester will be heavily structured around students' own interests, with each student researching and presenting on a social movement of their choosing.