Protest Performance: Strategies and Practices, 2010-2020

Catalog description

This class focuses on performance of dissent during the period marked by an unprecedented wave of global unrest. Rivaling the tumultuous 1960s, it has often been referred to as a "protest decade." Yet, few of these protests have produced tangible social change. The goal of this class is to explore the relationship between protest strategies and their outcomes, or lack thereof. We will examine different repertoires of contention (encampments, marches, blockades, hashtag activism, etc.) deployed in protest movements, from Occupy Wall Street in New York and Tahrir Square in Cairo at the beginning of the decade to movements in Singapore, Chile, and back to the United States toward its end. In this exploration, we will draw on a range of primary sources (reports, documentary films, and online archives), supplemented by scholarly texts from performance studies, sociology, philosophy, and history.