Tools
pedagogical: lecture slides
Day 1. What is Analysis?
Introduction to the method of analysis and exercises to help students put it into practice
Day 2. Looking Deeply at the Present
A glimpse at the crises surrounding students that call for a deep analysis
Day 3. What is the Social Matrix?
A first look at the history that has shaped our social order with a focus on hierarchical foundations and ideological formations
Day 4. The Monster Below the Surface
A look at the ideology of white supremacy, the way it drew dividing lines between the human and non-human, and the way it has been embedded in institutional and cultural practices
Day 5. The Changing Face of Caliban
A look at how racial meanings change, and are challenged, over time with a focus on Irish and Chinese immigration; a first look at the intersections of race and gender through the experiences of Chinese immigrant women
Day 6. A House Divided
A look into Post-Reconstruction and the Gilded Age with a focus on the ideologies that keep an inequitable, anti-democratic, and violent status quo in place
Day 7. Everything is Not Alright
A look into the ideologies and practices that challenged the Gilded Age status quo, and the crisis moment that gave birth to progressive movement
Day 8. A New and Raw Deal
A look at how progressive movement pushes FDR to make reforms oriented toward the common good; a look at how these reforms helped some and left others behind
Day 9. To Save the Soul of America
A look at the systemic roots of terrorist violence in the segregated South
Day 10. Love in Action
A look at the revolutionary force behind nonviolence and how nonviolence, as a way of seeing, helps us see and remove the roots of violence in ourselves and society
Day 11 (a). Sonic Revelations
A sampling and discussion of the music born from the conditions and struggles of the Civil Rights Era
Day 11 (b). From the Margins to the Center
A look at Cold War struggles for global hegemony with a focus on Third World liberation struggles and the impact these had on Black and Brown working class students in the U.S.
Day 12. On the Liberation of the Senses
A look at the counter-culture that emerged in opposition to, or as an alternative to, a liberal capitalist status quo underpinned by militarism, racism, materialism
Day 13. The Legacy of Women’s Liberation
A roundtable discussion on Women’s Liberation, the challenges it posed to the status quo, and its legacies today
Day 14. The Pendulum of History
A look at the corporate counter-revolution against the “democratizing forces” we learned about in Unit 2
Day 15. What is Neoliberalism?
A look at how the dominant ideology of neoliberalism, with its emphasis on capitalist market value, has changed our institutions and our roles in them
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Day 16. What is Lost in a Profit-Oriented Marketplace?
A discussion of jobs taken on by precarious laborers and how they add profit to an oligarchic class while robbing workers of their dignity and human potential
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Day 17. Seeing the Self in Context
A discussion of the larger contextual forces that shape our lives and the problems we mistake as “personal”
Day 18 (a). The Fire Before the Fire
A look at the systemic roots of the racial uprisings in response to police brutality and the failures of the justice system
Day 18 (b). The Monster in Our House
A look at how neoliberalism —the stripping of the social safety net, the turn towards austerity, and the emphasis on negative liberty — set the perfect conditions for Covid-19 to wreak havoc in the United States
Day 19. From the Many, What?
A look at the fracturing of U.S. society with an eye for those who profit off the division and disenfranchisement of the multitude
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Day 20. Another Story is Possible
A look at the social movements and social possibilities emerging in response to the ecological crises of capitalism
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Day 21. All Things Must Pass
A reflection on the course, the ways in which hope continuously emerges from catastrophe, and how the seeds of hope remain with us even after liberated individuals and movements are crushed by violence
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