Paper Must be at least 1100 words.
I want to make the paper about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] which was part of the Civil Right’s Movement.
The study of social movements, and the organizations that arise out of social movements, is complex. Since this is an interdisciplinary class, we will try to examine social movements from all perspectives, using all forms of media as analysis. While my training is as a historian, you need to not take a strictly historical perspective in completing these papers.
The first paper will ask students to pick a particular organization, group, movement leader or population that identifies with one of the broader social movements discussed in the class, and explore how that organization/group both allies itself and differentiates itself from other groups in the broader movement. The paper should also explore the historical origins of the broader movement from which your organization, group, or movement leader emerged, and the specific circumstances which led to its creation.
Your central research question should be “How does this organization, group, or leader fit into the broader movement of which it is a part?”
You are encouraged to choose an organization or individual whom you have direct access to, and for which you can incorporate interviews, site visits, and fieldwork into discovering more about. This can be a currently operating movement or organization, or one which had been active in the past. However, this is not a requirement. You can also approach the paper from strictly a research-oriented perspective, especially if you are interested in a movement which you may not have direct access to [i.e. the Chinese democracy movement of 1989.]
Example: If you would like to write about the history of the environmental movement, you could contact a current organization in the NYC area, and interview the director of that organization. Or, you could specifically study a particular environmental organization using library research. Your paper about that organization would discuss not also its history, its mission, and the issues in the movement it focuses on specifically, but also other organizations or strands of the movement to which it is related and interacts.
One way to fulfill the requirement of the first paper is to research a particular organization that is generally associated with a particular social movement. Then, find at least two other organizations generally associated with the same social movement [or subset thereof] — one may be more extreme in its views and strategies and one may be more moderate or established than the one you are focusing on; one may be more concerned with legal fights to achieve the aims of the movement, while one may be more concerned with increasing voter participation to achieve those goals, while still another may be concerned more with raising money [a foundation, for instance.] You can choose, but the idea is to “triangulate” your analysis of the organization you originally selected to give us a better idea about where they fit inside the broader movement.
