Taught By:
Susan Munkres
Director, Office of Community-Engaged Learning and Lecturer, Department of Sociology
University of Vermont
smunkres@uvm.edu
Read profile here.
Course Description:
Social Movements in Action is an upper-level sociology seminar where students will explore principles of democratic participation through engaged citizenship by developing and implementing a specific social change campaign. From the beginning of the course, students will be learning organizing skills and - in groups - building their campaigns around issues of their choosing. Significant time in and out of class will be devoted to developing, refining and implementing the campaign plan. Students may have the option to join existing campaigns on campus or in the community. Roughly half of the course content and time is devoted to applied learning through these campaigns, and students are expected to spend 30 hours over the semester in campaign-related implementation activities. In addition, we will consider certain “focal” historical and contemporary social change campaigns, including campus activism at UVM. Written work focuses on critically analyzing campaign development and implementation in light of other social change efforts.