Course Syllabus

EXPO E-42B 

Advanced Academic Writing: Writing in the Social Sciences

The Civil Rights Movement

Course Description

This course is designed for students who wish to build upon the skills developed in EXPO E-25 in order to produce more advanced research and writing in the social sciences. The course is also appropriate for students who wish to review their research and writing skills before embarking on a proseminar at Extension or graduate study elsewhere. Students are introduced to the various social science disciplines and their approaches, while also learning how to become critical consumers of social science research. Students develop their own independent research project in the social science field of their choosing. This project lasts the entire semester and involves developing a viable research question; learning how to find, analyze, and interpret resources appropriately; and, finally, developing and refining an original argument in a final paper (15-18 pages). Several smaller assignments over the course of the semester will break down the process of writing a research paper into discrete steps.

The topical focus of this course will be the civil rights movement in the United States in the 20^th Century, with an emphasis on the various tactics employed by activists (i.e. legal strategies, nonviolent civil disobedience) and the influence on subsequent social movements. We will begin by exploring the interdisciplinary field of Social Movement Theory and its relationship to the study of the civil rights movement. We will then continue to consider ways that scholars in various social science disciplines study this topic, including political scientists, historians, sociologists, and psychologists. For your own research project, you may focus on an aspect of the social movement of your choice in the United States in the 20^th or 21^st centuries.