LIBS 114: The Roots of American Activism

Course Description

This course examines the history, rhetoric, and social context of American citizen activism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Topics will include African American abolitionist and civil rights activism, women's suffrage, the home economics movement, the labor movement, educational reform, and student political involvement on college campuses. We will also pay special attention to how these movements played out locally. Our goal throughout will be to understand how ordinary citizens used language to effect social change - and how we today might do the same. (F)