Revolution

Instructor: Rick Bell

This course is dedicated to telling the stories of ordinary people in the American Revolution, to recovering the voices and experiences of all the founders of this country whose lives and contributions have been obscured by our tendency to worship a dozen or so well-to-do and well-educated men in suits as if they alone conceived and executed the American Revolution and the founding of the United States.

So we’ll be talking this semester about the marginalized, the downtrodden, the rank and file, the rabble – all the people who never make it onto monuments or money. The point of this is to allow us all to recognize the fundamental fact that fighting a Revolution is a collective act that requires a genuine mass movement. Declaring independence on a piece of parchment on a summer’s day in Philadelphia in 1776 doesn’t mean anything unless tens of thousands of people are willing to support that cause and fight to make it a reality. To revolt, then, is not an individual act – it’s for crowds, for mobs, and for whole communities to do together. Declaring independence is a fundamentally cooperative act.

GenEd: DSHS, SCIS
Offered in: Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Winter 2022
Required/Optional: Required

Instructor: Margaret Elwell

How does violence connect to revolution? Is violence the result of lone wolf actors, oppressive social structures, or just blind fate? Is it a side-effect of revolution or its driving force? Is violence a way to fight injustice, or is it a problem of evil? Why is one person’s uprising another person’s riot? In this seminar, we will explore literature, politics, and religion to debate the meaning and causes of violence. By examining the writings of a prison psychiatrist, historians, activists, theorists, and theologians alongside classic and contemporary literary works, we will disrupt common understandings of violence. In conducting interviews with community members, engaging in classroom debate, and sharing ideas in a project-poster session, we will investigate violence in the UMD community and wider DC area and propose ways toward revolutionary change.

GenEd: DSHU, DVUP
Offered in: Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022
Required/Optional: Optional

Instructor: Ross Salawitch

Hardly a day goes by without some news worthy item being reported on Earth’s changing climate. Often the stories are contradictory, tainted by parochialism and extremism, not only by the conservative and liberal media, but also by the camps of so-called believers and deniers. This seminar will begin with a review of the history of how decisions regarding human interactions with the environment have either doomed past societies to failure, or enabled long-term, sustainable success. Next we’ll examine the science that underlies global warming, in a manner accessible to non-scientists, as well as the potential consequences of a rapidly changing climate. We will then discuss the economics of large-scale provision of energy by renewable resources, which will be needed to avert climate catastrophe. During the final few weeks of this seminar, students will break into three groups, representing various parts of the world, and negotiate an international plan to transition the world energy supply to renewable resources that emit little or no greenhouse gases.

GenEd: DSNS, SCIS
Offered in: Spring 2021, Fall 2021
Required/Optional: Optional

Instructor: La Marr Bruce

This course invites students to hear a tradition of black protest music that reverberates from the slave ship to Soundcloud and beyond. Together we will ponder how black people have created, performed, broadcast, and mobilized music for protest, self-making, community-building, cultural critique, agitation, venting, healing, and joy. We will listen to live and studio performances by Paul Robeson, Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, Nina Simone, Fela Kuti, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Public Enemy, NWA, Lil’ Kim, Lauryn Hill, Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean, and others. Among the questions we will ponder are the following: What does protest sound like? Does all protest happen on picket lines and must all protest music entail overt political statements set to melody? At various historical junctures, how have black people mobilized music (and art more broadly) to shape and impact their political conditions? What can music accomplish that art forms like literature and visual art cannot? How have various social justice and liberation movements—including Abolitionism, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Movement for Black Lives, and beyond—deployed music? How has new media technology transformed protest (music)? How does a revolution sound to you?

GenEd: DSHU and DVUP
Offered in: Fall 2020, Spring 2022
Required/Optional: Optional