Social Change

This course explores personal, anthropological/sociological, and historical perspectives on the idea and practice of “social change.” What is meant by “social change”? What counts as “positive social change”? How does or should social change take place? What future world do projects for social change envision? We engage in critical and in-depth discussions of social change through the examination of a variety of projects and movements, from the global to the local. Over the course of the semester, students work in teams to research a local issue at the level of the university, the surrounding neighborhood, or the city. We also explore the role that ethnographic research, journalism, and storytelling play in the work of social change, and student teams experiment with producing multimedia stories meant to contribute to public conversations and advance meaningful change.