English 53 - Winter, 2021

Youth in Revolt

Class Information

Instructor: Clover, Joshua
CRN: 44495
Time: MWF 11:00-11:50
Location: Remote Instruction
GE Areas: Domestic Diversity

Description

We will read some books and watch some images which are by or feature some relatively youthful people who are more or less in the middle of a revolt. We don't care much about abstract revolt, teenaged rebellion, angsty kids. We care about actual revolts, rebellions, uprisings, revolutions of the relatively recent past, and about young people who understood in relation to them that changing the world means something far more committed and principled than tedious participation in official politics. Books listed below, online essays, films, additional materials will be on syllabus.

Grading

reading/watching notes: 50 pts
participation***: 20 pts
final essay: 30 pts

*** this can be either participation in synchronous lecture/discussions, or responses to alternate asynchronous reading/viewing

Texts

The Unseen, Nanni Balestrini
Revolutionary Letters, Diane Di Prima
The Spook Who Sat By the Door, Sam Greenlee
The Coming Insurrection, Invisible Committee
The 2015 Baltimore Uprising: A Teen Epistolary, [no author]