Protesting Inequality

Catalog description

Through the lens of political science, this course examines the political causes and consequences of inequality in the United States and how citizens have responded to the empirical realities of unequal circumstances. While inequality is an economically, politically, socially, and morally complex phenomenon, this course emphasizes that inequality does not "just happen" but rather is a result of the way our society is structured. Nevertheless, citizens-agents-have protested inequality on various occasions and in many different ways. It is on these citizen protest movements that we will focus most of our attention, including, but not limited to, the "Poor People's Movements" of the 1960s, the Welfare Rights Movement in the 1990s, and the Occupy Movement of the 2010s.