TOPIC : Claiming Citizenship and Changing America
COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit
Class Number: 14485 (First Six Week Session)
MTuWTh, 3:00 PM-4:50 PM, C2 203
Instructor: Cortney Smith
E-Mail: colasmit@indiana.edu
Office: C2 275
Phone: 855-6405
This undergraduate course
on social movements will focus on the rhetorical strategies used by social
protestors to reclaim citizenship. What does it mean to be a
citizen? How does a social movement gain traction? For example, how
did 20th century movements of the disenfranchised, such as the Civil Rights
Movement or Women's Suffrage, gain a voice and eventually enact change?
How might marginalized groups enter in the public realm to persuade while not
giving up their integrity and identity? How does persuasion affect social
change? These are all questions we will be considering throughout the
semester. In this course, students will engage primary rhetorical
documents of major American social movements of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Students will analyze the rhetorical foundation of social movements and how
texts produced by social protestors are consumed, critiqued, and
disseminated. The selected readings (mostly articles from contemporary
rhetoric journals) have been chosen to help the class define social movement,
explain its development, and look at specific rhetorical strategies
deployed.
Students will be evaluated based upon their
participation in class discussion, weekly assignments, and a semester project
in which he/she analyzes a particular social movement in-depth. By
the end of the course, students should be familiar with several specific social
movements and have a better understanding of the rhetorical construction of
social protest.
