Capstone: Contentious Pol inUS

Catalog description

Contentious politics consists of many "non-traditional" forms of political action, including social movements, protests, riots, and even political violence. This capstone political science seminar examines contentious politics in the U.S. through the lens of 1960/70s radical social movements, a key moment in U.S. politics in which the New Left imagined, theorized, negotiated, and contested the meaning of democracy and power. Students will examine and analyze the origins, ideologies, claims/grievances, goals, and strategies of radical political groups that roughly fall under the banner of the New Left: anti-war, feminism, black liberation, American Indian Movement, Chicano Movement, and Gay Liberation. We will study the politics of the struggle over rights, democracy, power, and the use/nonuse of violence within the New Left through a careful study of the primary texts (statements, agendas, etc.) produced by these groups. Students will investigate what the New Left helps us understand about power, politics, and violence in a modern democracy and evaluate the effectiveness of protest as a means to forward a political agenda, broadly defined.