An Overview Dr. Jean F. O'Barr, Instructor 210 East Duke Bldg. East Duke Building Social Movements is an introductory course that explores the question of how and why people come together to address an issue they consider an injustice. The goal of the class is to understand the life cycle of social movements by investigating their historical contexts, leadership, ideologies, organizational structures as well as achievements. The stories we need most to hear are not the stories of daunting success, achievements so impressive and final that they are hard to identify with, but the repeatable stories of composing and improvisation, in which adaptation is more central than dazzling accomplishment .
Narratives focus on dramatic events and transitions.
But within our repertoire of ways of thinking about human lives, we need ways of thinking of the plateaus between transitions, long periods of little obvious change or learning, when maintenance and continuity are paramount, even as we remember that all such periods are temporary. We are skilled, in this culture, at talking about change and transformation, not so skilled at thinking about sustaining what follows. We will use one case study, the two hundred year history of the global movement for women's rights, to explore the dynamics of social movements more generally, the links among them, and the global networks of which they are a part, now as well as in the past. Using this one case as a model, students will examine both other social movements and the theoretical issues raised by them. They will accomplish this by their individual written and through oral presentations in class.