OLLI Course Syllabus
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What Works: How Social Movements Transformed America
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
This syllabus is for a eight-class course (a two-hour class once a week for eight weeks). See note at end for a five or six-class course.
Recommended Reading:
Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize (Penguin Books, 1987)
Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle (1959; Harvard Univ. Press, 1996)
- First Class: Organization
- Introduction and overview
- The old Collective Behavior analysis
- The new Social Movement analysis:
- organizations, networks & resources
- The cycle of social movements
- Examples:
- Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Woman Suffrage Campaign
- Modern Feminist Movement
- Further Reading:
- Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the CRM (Free Press, 1984)
- Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open (Viking, 2000)
- Flora Davis, Moving the Mountain (Simon & Schuster, 1991)
- Malcolm Gladwell, "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg:"
- http://www.gladwell.com/1999/1999_01_11_a_weisberg.htm
- Bill Moyer, Doing Democracy (New Society Publishers, 2001)
- Second Class: Windows of Political Opportunity
- Tectonic shifts
- Political opportunity structures
- Relationship to strategic planning
- Examples:
- The Triangle Fire
- Passing the 19th Amendment
- A. Philip Randolph confronts FDR & HST; wins executive orders
- Further Reading:
- David Von Drehle, Triangle: The Fire that Changed America (Atlantic Monthly, 2003)
- Paula F. Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph (Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1990)
- Third Class: Narratives & Framing
- Stories giving hope and courage
- Broad cultural narratives
- Language & issue framing
- Master frames and cascading movements
- Subculture, identity, and activism
- Examples:
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Ernesto Cortes, Jr. and the IAF
- The conservative program in 10 words
- Woman Suffrage campaign
- The Sixties
- Sylvia Woods’ family traditions
- El Teatro Campesino and the UFWA
- Further Reading:
- Shakespeare’s Henry V at Battle of Agincourt:
- http://www.shakespeare-literature.com/Henry_V/20.html
- Robert B. Reich, Tales of a New America (Times Books, 1987)
- George Lakoff, Don’t Think of An Elephant! (Chelsea Green, 2004)
- Geoffrey Nunberg, Going Nucular (PublicAffairs, 2005)
- Fourth Class: Leadership Development
- Types and levels of leadership
- Cultivating leaders
- Women and Leadership
- Examples:
- Christabel Pankhurst finds her voice
- Ella Baker and women in the CRM
- Winning the Vote for Women
- Bob Moses and Freedom Summer
- A. Philip Randolph and the March on Washington
- Further Reading:
- Jo Freeman, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness":
- http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
- Warren Bennis & Burt Nanus, Leaders (Harper & Row, 1985)
- Belinda Robnett, How Long? How Long? African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights (Oxford Univ. Press, 1997)
- Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2003)
- Edward T. Chambers, Roots for Radicals (Continuum, 2006)
- Fifth Class: Strategic Alliances
- Allies at the personal level
- Challenges of cross-cultural and cross-class alliances
- Strategies for societal change
- Examples:
- White allies in the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Harvey Milk’s allies in San Francisco
- Blacks and Jews
- Sylvia Pankhurst organizes in London’s East End
- Further Reading:
- Andrea Ayvazian, "The Role of Allies," Fellowship (January/February 1995), pp. 6-9
- John M. Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School, 1932-1962 (Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1988)
- Freedom Writer: Virginia Durr, ed. by Patricia Sullivan (Routledge, 2003)
- Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street (St. Martin’s Press, 1982)
- Jonathan Kaufman, Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America (Scribner's, 1988)
- Sixth Class: Nonviolence, Tactical and Principled
- Two American tactical traditions
- Nonviolence as principle and tactic
- Nonviolent tactics in practice
- Radical Flank Effects
- Examples:
- Henry David Thoreau vs. John Brown
- Gandhi and Emmeline Pankhurst
- Black Panther Party & the Weather Underground
- Southern Civil Rights Movement
- Ossie Davis on Malcolm X
- Further Reading:
- Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle (Porter Sargent, 2005)
- Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War Home (Univ. of California Press, 2004)
- Flores Forbes, Will You Die with Me? (Atria Books, 2006)
- Lucy G. Barber, Marching on Washington (Univ. of California Press, 2002)
- Seventh Class: Music and the Arts
- Music and the mobilization of tradition
- Examples:
- Music in the Civil Rights Movement
- The Folk Revival
- Music in the Labor & Left movements
- Music in the Woman Suffrage Movement
- Art & Action
- Example:
- Posters from the Anti-Vietnam War Movement
- Further Reading:
- Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Music and Social Movements (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998)
- T.V. Reed, The Art of Protest (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2005)
- Eighth Class: Presentation and discussion determined by class
- The eighth class will be reserved for topics initiated by the class (an example might be an exploration of historical and contemporary peace movements, or conservation and environmental movements).
NOTE: In five and six-class versions of this course, the third and fourth classes will combine topics.
