Course Description
An advanced urban geographic course that will focus on the intersection of urban social justice and the mobilization of urban social movements. This course analyzes the rationales, strategies, successes, and failures of urban social movement formation and their connections to ideas associated with social justice.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will be assigned one extra reading per class
and be expected to engage the reading, as well as class
discussion, in a more informed and critical manner than
undergraduate students. Additionally, graduate students will be
assigned an extra writing requirement (extra 40% length added
to their final research paper). Overall, it is expected that
graduate students will help foster more thoughtful discussion
in class but not at the expense of allowing ample time for
undergraduate students to contribute to class discussion.
Athena Title
Urban Social Movements
Undergraduate Pre or Corequisite
GEOG 3630 or GEOG 3630E or permission of department
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
The main objective of this course is to expand urban geographic knowledge. To do so, this course will use urban geographic theory and empirical case study material to educate students in a focused way about the rationales, strategies, success, and failures of urban social movement formation and their connections to ideas associated with social justice. The course will emphasize understanding how spatial processes of uneven development often underpin social movement formation and bring meaning to social justice. • expand their basic understanding of urban geographic theory; • gain an appreciation of the value of looking at and understanding cities from a spatial perspective; • learn how urban inequalities are produced, how they persist, and how they could be overcome and historically have been overcome; • gain familiarity with the intricacies of urban geographic politics, the history of urban social movement efforts, and the challenges that urban social movements face through engagement with current events; • come to understand how the persistence of inequality in the US is tied up in the intersection of race, class, gender and sexual difference; • gain the ability to find, assess the reliability of, and interpret urban social movement information using a variety of print and online sources; • better understand the connectedness of cities and the forces and processes that create urban geographical uneven development.
Topical Outline
-History of urban geographic social movements -Social justice and the city -Legacies of community organizing -Spatial politics of direct action -Poor people’s movements -Racial politics in the city -Urban politics of gender equality and activist mothering -Theories of urban intersectionality and spatial solidarity