This course will help you to better understand and develop robust knowledge of social protest as a rhetorical act across different eras, contexts, publics, etc. We will accomplish this broader objective by:

• Understanding the nuanced relations between rhetoric and social movement in both historical and contemporary contexts
• Identifying multiple rhetorical situations through which social justice movement manifests, spreads, and influences public policies and opinions
• Understanding why and how specific rhetorical strategies deployed by social movements shape but also constrain social justice
• Exploring how social media as a rhetorical space has reshaped and renegotiated social justice movements
• Recognizing the establishment rhetoric and its response against social protests
• Walking through relevant case studies of social movements to understand why and how movements fail and succeed.