Rhetoric, Writing, and Public Discourse 332: Coalition, Identity, and Difference in Social Movements

Successful movements for social change have almost always relied on strategies of coalition-building that unite movements working toward different goals against a common enemy, or around a common vision of a shared future. This course will examine the ways that social movements have created and maintained coalition in the 20th and 21st-century. We will focus especially on the ways that different perspectives and experiences of race, class, gender/sexuality, ability, and nationality have been negotiated within different social movements, as well as in building bridges between movement groups. In addition to scholarship on the rhetoric of social movements, we will also consider the organizational and interpersonal communicative strategies that movements have used to build successful coalition, the ways that social movements make decisions and negotiate internal conflict, the relationship between conversations within movements and communication between movements and external audiences, and why coalitions collapse. We will consider case studies of coalitional politics including historical and contemporary “poor people’s movements”, activism around welfare, childcare, and “wages for housework”, the relationship between feminist and antiracist struggles in the US and global anticolonial, anti-capitalist, and gender justice struggles, the politics of mutual aid, and coalitions between LGBTQIA+ activists and advocates for more inclusive immigration policy. Assignments will include a self-designed research project, an oral presentation, and several short responses. May be taken for credit toward the Gender Studies major or minor.