Students will learn to:

1. think critically so that they can recognize how and why 
perceptions of movement leaders and groups may differ over time 
from their actual intentions and missions;
2. think critically so that they can identify how the literature,
film, and photography of the movement has evolved and changed to 
reflect social and political gains and setbacks;  
3. apply skills of literary analysis to their interpretations of
literature, photography, and film and write persuasively about 
what they have seen and read;
4. discuss and write analytical papers and paper drafts about
such following key concepts of movement activism in relation to 
literature, film, and photography: the idea of participatory 
democracy, the concept of the Beloved Community, the use of 
nonviolence to dismantle segregation, the leadership of women 
and grassroots community members, the strategic use of media to 
leverage social change, internal tensions within and between 
southern and northern movement organizations, the influence of
local activism on national policy, and the culture and etiquette 
of Jim Crow;
5. think deeply and write analytically about how perceptions 
of race and racial difference have informed movement literature, 
film, and photography; and about why segregationists privileged 
the inaccurate notion of two races, blacks and whites;
6. list ways in which movement literature, film, and photography
extend themes that characterized the earlier African American 
freedom struggle for emancipation, as well as how they 
anticipate contemporary discussions of social, political, and 
economic issues that affect the poor and people of color today;
7. and apply their writing and speaking skills to assisting in 
experiential learning projects that document and memorialize 
local communities’ participation during the civil rights 
movement and/or that employ archival sources to educate 
community and public school audiences about this era.

The selections of specific topics will vary from instructor to
instructor and from semester to semester. Here is one example of 
how instructors might organize the course:

A. The Modern Civil Rights Movement 
1) What is Race?
2) What was Jim Crow?
3) Nonviolent direct social action and the Beloved Community:
advantages and limitations  
4) Women’s leadership in the movement: myths and realities
5) The King Years (1955-68) and their legacy in literary and 
visual representations

B. Rethinking the Civil Rights Movement
1) What is Black Power?
2) What was the Black Arts Movement?   
3) Beyond a black/white binary: Latino, Asian, and/or Native
American activism
4) Beyond the Movement: the so-called decade of the black woman
writer (1980-1990) and the imprint of black public intellectuals 
such as Ta’Nehisi Coates, bell hooks, Michael Eric Dyson, 
Melissa Harris Perry, Yolanda Pierce, and/or others  
5) The Movement’s legacy in local communities (presentations 
of final student work in experiential learning projects, such as 
the Freedom Riders Memorial Project in Anniston, Alabama; the 
Flat Rock Community Preservation Project in Roswell, Georgia; 
the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection in 
Atlanta, Georgia; and the Civil Rights Digital Library, 
University of Georgia)

Students in this course are expected to be familiar with and
adhere to the above University of Georgia honor code and culture 
of academic honesty. All violations of academic honesty will be 
handled according to the University of Georgia honor code.  
Students may participate in graded group projects at the 
instructor's discretion. Specific information about plagiarism
can be found on the English Department homepage.