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Course Description

Summary

What is political? How do we acquire political knowledge? How is political understanding shaped across generations? What is the relationship between power, gender, race, and politics? Why do people participate in social movements? What is a “peaceful protest”? In this course we will examine the interplay between people, power, and politics. We will consider participation in some large-scale social movements in the U.S. including the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Liberation Movement, pro-choice and pro-life movements, gay, lesbian, and transgender rights, and white nationalist movements. We will use these movements as examples to examine how individuals shaped social structures, political systems, culture and history, while being shaped by them. This course will give you some familiarity with important classical and modern psychological and sociological theories relevant to politics and the functioning of political systems, as well as a sense of how social science research can be used evaluate theories and generate new knowledge. At the same time, the course emphasizes the need to take into account differences in the social contexts (cultures, nations, social classes, historical eras) when theorizing or doing research.