2020-21 Academic Catalog

In this course, students will encounter ideas about nonviolent direct action from practitioners alongside theories from a rapidly growing literature in political science about the causes, dynamics, and consequences of civil resistance campaigns. We will then study major social movements in Latin America, including the Mapuche movement, the #NiUnaMenos campaign against femicide, and Brazil’s Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (MTST). The course’s main focus, however, will be on nonviolent struggles for democratization: the No campaign against Pinochet’s regime in Chile, the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in Bolivia, the Movimiento Autoconvocado in Nicaragua, and recent democratic crises in Venezuela, Bolivia, and El Salvador.