Rethinking the Civil Rights Movement

Catalog description

This graduate course encourages a rethinking of the complex components, arguments and activities that have characterized what we have come to know as the Civil Rights Movement, concentrating primarily on African American agency, actions and politics, through careful reading of recent scholarship in the field. While knowledge of U.S. history is preferred, this course asks larger thematic questions about protest movements (the role of the state, relationships with and between oppressed groups and organizations, and periodization), that will interest non-Americanists also. Some of the topics covered include: gender, organizing and strategies, the local, global ramifications and interactions, organizational structures and politics, and the recent concept of the Long Civil Rights Movement. M