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This module explores the history of the United States from the 1930s to the present day by examining the concept of ‘protest’ and its role in shaping the relationship between the state and its people. Students will be encouraged to think critically how grassroots movements have taken shape and developed, and also how elite forces have co-opted seemingly ‘popular’ ideas for their own ends; indeed, top down and bottom up social forces in the United States have often had a complex relationship. Movements based around efforts to liberate or gain rights for marginalised people have often revealed deep class and racial fissures in American society, and have sometimes struggled to connect to each other. In the module we will explore a range of protest movements across the political spectrum and encompassing various elements of US society.

The module is divided into two parts. In Part 1: Dissidents, we explore the various ways insurgent Americans have organised according to class-based, racial, or gendered identities, as well as the ways in which left protest politics has engaged with mainstream party politics over the past eighty years. We also examine a key fault line in US politics that has driven numerous protest movements: foreign policy and the place of the United States as a global superpower. In Part 2: Reaction as Protest, we explore the different ways in which the political right in the United States has been able to mobilize Americans along very similar lines to their opponents, using different group identities around race, class, and gender to generate protest movements that feed off the demands and platforms of their opponents.

You will be able to think about the extent to which social protest has brought about real and lasting change in the US over the past eighty years, and also how far the roots of our current moment can be located in the protest politics of the past.