Transfer Student Rsrch Sem: No Justice, No Peace: Peacebuilding, Social Movements, and…

Catalog description

“What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! If we don’t get it...SHUT IT DOWN!” This seminar teaches essential research skills for undergraduate writing through the lens of peace and justice studies and sociological approaches to the study of social movements. We will combine both primary (interviews, surveys, etc.) and secondary (existing literature and data sets) research methods, studying how and when agents for social change fight for justice as peacebuilders, organizers, and intellectuals. In this course, we will read peace scholars such as Johan Galtung, social movement intellectuals like Angela Davis and Keeanga-Yahmatta Taylor; we’ll learn to evaluate academic and practitioner work measuring, describing, and analyzing the efficacy of peacebuilders, activists and intellectuals writing in academic and nonacademic spaces. Students will work through the interdisciplinary course material on peace, justice, and activism through low stakes shorter essays on course content. They will compose a literature review, a proposal for a semester-long research project, and a final research essay, submitted in sections with ample time for peer review. Upon completing this course, the successful student will be prepared with general research skills as well as a strong foundation in the various ways scholars and practitioners fight for justice.