Student Portal   :   Info For Faculty/Staff   :   FAQ   :   Announcements   :   Contact Us 
      :        :        :      :        :    
Publications and
Scheduling
Academic and Administrative Calendar
Advance Course Information
The General Catalog
The Navigator
Schedule of Classes
 
 
 
 
 
 

Winter 2005 Advance Course Information

This information effective for Winter 2005. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.


History of Consciousness

[HISC-080J] [HISC-234A]


80J. Social Movements in the United States

Tues/Thurs 12:00-1:45 p.m.
175 Stevenson
Instructor: Barbara Epstein
TAs: Chris Dixon, Adam Hefty, Greg Youmans
Messages: 459-2757, or bepstein@nature.berkeley.edu

Socialism at the Turn of the Century

January 4: Introduction
January 6: Marxism, Anarchism, and Utopian Socialism in the US

Reading: Paul Buhle, Marxism in the USA From 1870 to the Present Day, chapters two and three, "American Socialism, American Culture," and "Marxism in the Debs Era," pp. 58-120.

The Thirties: Labor and Communism

January 11: The Communist Party
January 13: The Rise of a Mass Labor Movement

Reading: Robin D.G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, Part One, chapters 1-5, pp. 13-116. In the Reader.

The Fifties: McCarthyism and Dissent

January 18: McCarthyism
January 20: Dissent in the Fifties

Reading: Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, chapter 4, "‘They are Everywhere’: The Communist Image," and chapter 5, "‘A Great and Total Danger’: The Nature of the Communist Threat," pp. 119-200. In the Reader.

The Sixties: Civil Rights

January 25: The Civil Rights Movement
January 27: Film: Eyes on the Prize

Reading: Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle, chapters 4-6 (pp. 103-206). University of California Press, 1995. In the Reader.

The Sixties: The New Left and the Anti-War Movement

February 1: The New Left
February 3: Film: The War at Home

Reading: The New Left: A Documentary History, ed. Massimo Teodori, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969. Selections from "The Beginning of the Movement," "The Emergence of a New Left Position," and "The Radicalization of the Movement." In the Reader. 89 pages.

Feminism and Environmentalism

February 8: The Women's Movement
February 10: The Environmental Movement

Reading: Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America, chapters 4, 6, "Leaving the Left" and "Passion and Politics," pp. 94-140, 196-226. In the Reader.
Rik Scarce, Eco-Warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental Movement (Chicago, Noble press, 1999?). Chapters 1-3, "Ghandi Meets the Luddites," "A Question of Compromise," and "Ecology Meets Philosophy, pp. 1-40. In the Reader.

The Gay and Lesbian Movement

February 15: The Gay and Lesbian Movement
February 17: Film: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk

Reading:

Stephen Epstein, "Gay and Lesbian Movements in the United States: Dilemmas of Identity, Diversity, and Political Strategy," in The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics: National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement, ed. Barry D. Adam, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Andre Krouwel (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), pp. 31-90.
Allan Berube and Jeffrey Escoffier, et. al., "Queer Nation," Out/Look, Winter 1991, pp. 14-23
Mattilda, ed., That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (2004), Priyank Jindal, "Sites of Resistance or Sites of Racism?" pp. 23-30; Dean Spade, "Fighting to Win," pp. 31-37; and Mattilda, "Gay Shame: From Queer Autonomous Space to Direct Action Extravaganza," pp. 237-262.
In the Reader.

Jews and the Left; Movements of the Right (two unrelated topics)

February 22: Jews and the Left
February 24: Movements of the Right

Reading:

Arthur Liebman, Jews and the Left (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1979), chapter two, "The Left Parties and the Jews: The 'Dependent' Variable," pp. 38-69.
Sara Diamond, Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right (New York: Guilford, 1998), chapters 6-8, "Family Matters," "As If It Were Murder," and "The Anti-Gay Agenda," pp. 113-172.

Global Justice and Anti-War Movements

March 1: The Global Justice/Anti-War Movements, and Anarchism
March 3: Student Reports

Reading:

Barbara Epstein and Chris Dixon, "A Politics and a Sensibility: the Anarchist Current in the US Left" (in Anatole Anton et al., Socialism for a New Generation; 22 manuscript pages).
Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement, ed. Eddie Yuen, Daniel Burton-Rose, and George Katsiaficas (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2004) Introduction (by Eddie Yuen), pp. vii-xix.
Notes from Nowhere, We Are Everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anticapitalism (London: Verso, 2003), "Emergence: an irresistible global uprising," pp. 19-61, and "Walking: we ask questions," pp. 499-511
Globalize Liberation, ed. David Solnit (San Francisco: City Lights Press, 2004), Introduction, David Solnit
Elizabeth Martinez, "Where was the Color in Seattle?" Monthly Review, July 2000
L.A. Kauffman, "A Short History of Radical Renewal," in From ACT UP to the WTO, ed. Benjamin Shepard and Ronald Hayduk (London: Verso, 2002), pp. 35-40.

March 8: Student Reports
March 10: Final exam

The Reader will be available at Slug Books. All the readings for the course will be in the Reader.

Requirements for the course: students are expected to attend lectures and section meetings, and to have the reading for each week completed by their section meeting.

Written assignments:

  1. a short, 2-3 page paper, early in the quarter, topic to be decided by each TA (on a question relevant to the course as a whole, such as, "what is a social movement?")
  2. a take-home mid-term
  3. a final exam

In addition, each student will observe and/or participate in some social movement group or organization during the quarter, and will submit a written report on it before the end of the quarter. Students will give reports on these projects either to their section or to the class as a whole, in the latter case, on March 8.

[top of page]


234A. Social Movements and Theories of Social Movements

Tues 3:00-6:00 p.m.
109 Oakes
Instructor: Barbara Epstein

January 4: Introduction

Two Moments of Protest: the Thirties and the Sixties

January 11: The Popular Front

Reading: Michael Demming, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century, (Verso, 1996), Part One, "The Left and American Culture," Part Two, "Anatomy of the Cultural Front," chapter twelve, "American Culture and Socialist Theory," and Conclusion. Pp 1-159, 423-472. [228 pp.]

Recommended: Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: How They Succeed, Why They Fail (Vintage, 1979), chapter two, "The Unemployed Workers' Movements."

January 18: The New Left and its Successors: Leninism and Non-Violence

George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (South End Press, 1987), Part One, "A Global Analysis of 1968," pp. 3-82.
Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (Verso, 2002), "A New Generation of Revolutionaries," pp. 15-128.
Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s, University of California, 1991, chapter two, "The Clamshell Alliance: Consensus and Utopian Democracy," pp. 58-91, and, if you can, chapter one, "Protest in the 1960s and 1980s: The Blocked Cultural Revolution," pp. 21-57.

Problems of Contemporary Social Movements

January 25: Decline of the Labor Movement

Kim Moody, An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism (Verso, 1998), chapters 1-9, 14, pp. 1-219, 331-350. 239 pp.
Bill Fletcher, Jr., and Fernando Gasparin, "The Politics of Race and Labor in the USA," in Socialist Register 2003, Fighting Identities: Race, religion and ethno-nationalism, ed. Leo Panitch and Colin Leys (London, Merlin Press, 2002), pp. 245-264.

February 1: The Internal Culture of Social Movements

Francesca Polletta, Freedom is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. 230 pp.

February 8: Race Relations and Racism

Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston: Beacon, 2002. 198 pp.

Recommended: Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: How They Succeed, Why They Fail (New York: Vintage, 1979), chapter 4, "The Civil Rights Movement."

February 15: Feminism and the Gay and Lesbian Movements

Stephen Epstein, "Gay and Lesbian Movements in the United States: Dilemmas of Identity, Diversity, and Political Strategy," in The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics: National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement, ed. Barry D. Adam, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Andre Krouwel (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), pp. 31-90.
Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America's Second Wave. London: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

February 22: Social Movement Theory

Reading: James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements, University of Chicago, 1997. Part One, chapters 2-4, Basic Approaches: "The Classical Paradigms," "Basic Dimensions of Protest," "Cultural Approaches," 19-99.
Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, "Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory," Sociological Forum, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1999, pp. 27-54.
Richard Flacks, "Knowledge for What? Thoughts on the state of social movement studies," manuscript, 15 pp.
Doug Bevington and Chris Dixon, "Movement-Relevant Theory: Rethinking Social Movement Scholarship and Activism," Social Movement Studies, forthcoming.

Recommended:
Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, University of Chicago Press, 1982, chapter 3, "The Political Process Model," pp. 36-59.
Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer D. Zald, "Introduction: Opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes—toward a synthetic, comparative perspective on social movements," pp. 1- 20 in Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements (Cambridge University Press, 1996), ed. McAdam, McCarthy and Zald.
Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s, University of California Press, 1991, chapter seven, "Radical Politics in Late Capitalist Society," pp. 227-261.

March 1: The Growth of the Right

Sara Diamond, Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right (New York, Guilford, 1998), chapters 6-8, p. 113-172.
Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (Metropolitan Books, 2004), chapters 6-10, epilogue, p. 113-251.
Michael Lind, Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics, chapters five–seven, epilogue, pp. 108-184.

March 8: New Currants in Social Movements

Barbara Epstein and Chris Dixon, "A Politics and a Sensibility: the Anarchist Current in the US Left" (in Anatole Anton et al., Socialism for a New Generation; 22 manuscript pages).
Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement, ed. Eddie Yuen, Daniel Burton-Rose, and George Katsiaficas (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2004) Introduction (by Eddie Yuen), pp. vii-xix.
Notes from Nowhere, We Are Everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anticapitalism (London: Verso, 2003), "Emergence: an irresistible global uprising," pp. 19-61, and "Walking: we ask questions," pp. 499-511
Globalize Liberation, ed. David Solnit (San Francisco: City Lights Press, 2004), Introduction, David Solnit
Elizabeth Martinez, "Where was the Color in Seattle?" Monthly Review, July 2000
L.A. Kauffman, "A Short History of Radical Renewal," in From ACT UP to the WTO, ed. Benjamin Shepard and Ronald Hayduk (London: Verso, 2002), pp. 35-40.

[top of page]