Social Movements in the Modern United St

Throughout the history of the United States, groups of people have organized collectively into social movements to protest injustice and create social change. This course will provide a concise survey of six key social movements over the past century: labor, civil rights/Black Power, feminist, LGBTQ, disability, and environmental justice movements. By approaching these through an intersectional historical lens, we will consider how activists identify and pursue their goals, and how historians shape our memory of their accomplishments. Students will learn to identify and closely read the types of sources historians draw on to tell the story of social movements, including periodicals, memoirs, oral history interviews, government documents, photographs, and more. We will pay attention to the debates within movements over strategies and tactics, to conflicts and collaborations between them, and to the lessons they offer to contemporary activists who are working to change the world. The course will include field trips to sites around New York City with significance to the history of social movements, and will conclude with students undertaking a process of research and discovery around a social movement of their choosing.