Tools for Social Change

Catalog description

This course serves as the anchor for community-engaged course work at Gallatin.It complements the range of course offerings at Gallatin and NYU by focusing on connection between theories of social change and the practice of social change.This course thus gives students a platform to question and start defining their roles in social change, through readings, case studies, conversations with activists, and reflection exercises.“Tools for Social Change” is a course for proactive, humble-yet-ambitious students who are motivated to engage deeply with the challenges of this coursework.This hands-on course will help students make important decisions about their own values and belief systems, and figure out how to put those into practice.Students will then reflect on the experience in the form of small writing exercises and a final project.Guest speakers will include activists from local organizations and former Gallatin students who have gone on to pursue activism.Readings will include a range of “classic” and more contemporary texts on the connection between critical theories and practice, including: Paulo Freire, Martin Luther King, Cornel West, Frances Moore Lappe, among others.