English 166

Other Readings and Media

Description

This course takes up the question of protest and dissent – the forms it takes, its poetics and its politics – to ask about the relationship between the state and its citizenry. How do forms of protest become legitimized? What distinguishes a revolutionary from a terrorist? We will read a range of philosophical, historical, and literary material from around the world to inquire into how protest makes and unmakes nations and communities. From anti-colonial freedom struggles to Civil Rights, from the Founding Fathers to Occupy Wall Street and BLM, we will try and understand what makes protest political and what makes it productive.

Readings may include work by M.K. Gandhi, Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis, Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Claudia Rankine.