Community Studies Advance Course Information Fall 2004

This information effective for Fall 2004. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Merrill 102, MWF 8:00-9:10
Instructor: David Brundage
College Eight 310; 459-4645; brundage@ucsc.edu
Office hours: Mon and Tues, 10:30-12:00

The course will introduce students to the history of the civil rights movement, one of the most significant grassroots social movements in American history. The course is built around lectures and readings in primary and secondary works and features a number of segments of the two public television series, Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years and Eyes on the Prize: America at the Racial Crossroads. We will devote particular attention to the role of rank-and-file activists in shaping the movement. We will also attempt to assess the ways in which the movement changed—and did not change—American society as a whole.

Students will be evaluated on the basis of: (1) attendance at lectures and participation in required weekly discussion sections (25%); (2) two essays (5-6 pages each), addressing key historical questions (25% each paper); and (3) an in-class final examination (25%).

Robert Weisbrot, Freedom Bound: A History of America's Civil Rights Movement
Clayborne Carson, et al. (editors), The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi

These are available at Bay Tree Bookstore and are also on two-hour reserve at McHenry Library. Both Eyes on the Prize television series are also on reserve at the Film and Music Center in McHenry Library.

September 24: Introduction to the course

September 27–October 1: The roots of the movement

TTh 2:00-3:45 p.m., Oakes 222
Instructor: Paul Ortiz
Phone: 459-5583
E-mail: portiz@ucsc.edu

We will study what communities past and present have done to resist, negotiate, and overcome systems of oppression including colonialism, slavery, racism, economic injustice, and gender oppression. We will also learn how modern systems of exploitation have been created. The emphasis will be placed on tactics of organization, recruitment, and self-activity. Along the way, we will explore the following questions: Where do ideas for democratic social change come from? How do "ordinary people" organize in the face of exploitation? How does historical memory shape identity and political action? How do people build the relationships of trust that form the building blocks of new social movements? Emphasis will be placed on subaltern groups including slaves, peasants, immigrants, working-class women, and "second-class citizens." The people that Herman Melville referred to in Moby Dick as the "mariners, renegades and castaways" of the emerging global economy from 1492 to present.

We will examine the intersection between past and present struggles using an interdisciplinary approach that keeps individual agency and structures of oppression in dialogue and tension. We will draw upon readings, films, oral testimony, music, poetry, "incendiary literature" and other forms of evidence.

The course is designed for community studies majors who plan to do a six-month field study. Non-majors interested in the course are welcome to participate if there is enrollment space.

Reading, writing, and research assignments for this course will be substantial. Not for anyone contemplating a four-course load; I recommend thinking of this course as a primary responsibility in the quarter you take it. To paraphrase C.L.R. James, "You don't play with revolution."

Class Participation and Response Papers: The purpose of the weekly Response Paper is to help you to explore key questions as well as to prepare for seminar discussions.

Response Papers
Must critically engage with class readings. Identify the author's argument and move to your own analysis of the piece. On weeks when we sample readings from different authors, you will write comparative response essays, picking three or more essays or chapters to compare and contrast. Each student will write 8 response papers (each will be 4 pages, typed and double-spaced). Papers are due on the week of the assigned reading.

Final/Research Project: Each student will write a fifteen-page research paper on the history and development of a social movement. The topic must be approved by the instructor by the end of week 4. The paper should address the movement's origins as well as its theory and practice of organizing and interior social relations.

Class Discussions
I expect each of us to observe mutual respect towards each other. Social movements are built upon relationships of trust and reciprocity—not abstract ideologies. Please design a name-tag that will help us learn your name. We will wear name-tags until we learn each other's names.

Grading: Class participation (10%); Response papers (40%); Final Research Project (50%)

Office Hours
My office is: #208, College 8. My regular office hours are: Wednesdays, 10:15-11:45 and 2-3:30 p.m. I am available for meetings outside of these times via appointment.

Field Study Workshops
There will be four required workshops to help students prepare for their part and full-time field placements in Community Studies. All workshops will be conducted from 6-7:45 M on selected Thursdays at Thimann Lecture 003. Plan ahead since these are required workshops!

Black liberation struggles have repeatedly changed the course of modern history. According to world-renowned scholar Edward Said, the African Diaspora made the notion of universal human rights universally applicable for the first time. According to Said, the central lesson taught by the Diaspora's social movements is, "if you wish to uphold basic human justice you must do so for everyone, not just selectively for the people that your side, your culture, your nation designates as okay." Towards the end of his life, the great Palestinian intellectual noted, "… there can be little doubt that figures like [James] Baldwin and Malcolm X define the kind of work that has most influenced my own representations of the intellectual's consciousness. It is a spirit in opposition, rather than in accommodation...."

The African Diaspora poses fundamental questions about the human condition: What is the relationship between freedom and slavery? The individual, the community, and the nation? What are the legacies of forms of oppression that have endured for centuries? How may people today build new societies where, to paraphrase Aimé Césaire, "there is a place for all at the rendezvous of victory"?

We will critically examine anti-slavery, anti-colonial, and revolutionary struggles in the African Diaspora from the 18th century to the present, with a focus on the Americas. We will read classic works by Wole Soyinka, W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, Marcus Garvey, and others. Many of the authors we will be reading this quarter suffered persecution, exile, imprisonment, and worse for their writings and political beliefs.

Major themes will include Pan-Africanism and the origins of Diaspora studies; history, memory and revolution; dynamics of racial oppression; self-determination and democracy; debates within black communities; gender and class in protest movements, popular arts and reparations. Using oral testimonies, novels, archeology, music, poetry, film, and other types of media, we will explore the creative reconfiguration of black identities, politics, and cultures in a dynamic and diverse Diaspora.

The widespread reemergence of slave labor and a revived economic colonialism makes the study of the African Diaspora more critical than ever. Accordingly, we will use the history of the Diaspora to explore continuities, connections and contrasts between the past, present, and future.

Course Format

Class Participation and Response Papers: The primary purpose of the Response Paper is to help you explore key questions and to prepare for seminar discussion. Students will write 8 weekly response papers that address major themes in the assigned texts, films, lectures, and discussion. Each paper will be at minimum 3 pages, typed and double-spaced. When the week's reading consists of articles, your response paper should cover at least three of the articles. Your response paper should include a clear analysis of the author's main thesis. Feel free to include insights that you've garnered from films, music, speakers, and other sources. At times, I will ask you to address specific questions in your papers. Response papers will be due on Thursdays in class. Students will occasionally trade response papers and comment on each other's work.

Facilitators: Each student will help lead one discussion section during the quarter. Facilitators will initiate discussion on a set of readings and may use a variety of creative strategies to accomplish this. Co-facilitators are expected to meet outside of class and prepare a lesson plan for their session. See the instructor for further details.

Grading: Class participation (10%) Leading discussion (10%) Response papers (40%) Research Paper (40%)

Attendance: More than 2 unexcused absences will have a profound impact on your grade.

Office Hours
I will hold office hours this quarter (#208 College 8) on Wednesdays, 10:15-11:45 and 2 to 3:30 unless otherwise specified. I am available to meet outside of these times by appointment.

Research Paper
You will write a twelve-page research paper on a major figure, theme, movement, etc., within the African Diaspora. We will talk collectively and individually about possible topics, and you should draw ideas from the reading assignments. You will complete this project in consultation with the instructor. Each student should have a general topic chosen by mid term when we will form peer editing or affinity groups. You will find the reference librarians at McHenry to be a valuable resource in conducting your research.

Films
We will screen films that provide useful insights into theoretical and interpretive issues raised by the texts. If you miss a film in class due to absence, it is your responsibility to screen the film at the McHenry Film and Media Center in the Library.

Required Texts: (Available at Slug Books and McHenry Library Reserves) Wole Soyinka, The Lion and the Jewell; Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism; Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth; C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution; Earl Lovelace, Salt: A Novel; Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa; African Diaspora Course Reader

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