3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

Nonviolence occupies an idealized place in the American imaginary of political action, due in part to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacies have shaped international ideals of social change. Nonviolence is often assumed to be transparent and of obvious moral superiority. Are these assumptions valid? How does nonviolence become a political project? How do we evaluate the efficacy of projects of nonviolence? What possibilities does nonviolence represent in our everyday lives? Is there a nonviolent way of being in the world? How might nonviolence shape our understanding of what it means to be human? This course will use anthropological perspectives to explore these questions and reflect on the lived reality of nonviolence in social worlds, including our own. We will engage in critical readings of selected texts, while inviting students to deeply examine the contemporary relevance and availability of nonviolence in literature, media, social media, and archives of art and theatre.