Building Popular Power: Social Movements, Democracy, and the Political Imagination

Undergraduate / Graduate

What does collective political activity look like outside, beyond, or beneath the structures of the sovereign state? How have ordinary people fought to transform state structures or build alternative political institutions of their own? This course examines these and other questions by turning to the history and political theory of social movements. From 19th-century labor uprisings and 20th-century anti-colonial struggles to the Black Lives Matter movement and the global rise of populism, we will investigate how movements for political and social change have not only challenged existing institutions, but also sought to invent new forms of collective organization while expanding the horizons of democratic life. Engaging historical, contemporary, and canonical texts-as well as films and other visual media-the course will trace how social movements have contested and sought to transform dominant structures and discourses-including legal institutions, property relations, and citizenship-and how internal contestation over leadership, strategy, and goals have affected the viability and vibrancy of such movements. Key themes include the relationship between social movements and democratic life; the tensions between spontaneity and organization, centralization and decentralization, revolution and reform; the difficulty of sustaining participatory movements over time; and the evolving meanings of "democracy" itself.