Hampshire College
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Social Change
From its founding, Hampshire College has attracted students who are engaged both inside and outside of the classroom with issues of social responsibility, change, and justice.
Hampshire has always connected a student’s education to the real world, not only through inquiry-based pedagogy, but also through encouraging a strong sense of social justice and community responsibility. Hampshire engages not only students’ mind but can also assist students in engaging the community around them. Emphasis is placed on continuing to build infrastructures to support community-based learning, by developing new areas of inquiry, including an anti-oppression curriculum and a multiple cultural perspectives requirement.
As a leader in campus activism for decades, Hampshire continues to live up to the college motto, “To know is not enough.”
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Social Movements and Social Change: Zapatismo |
On January 1, 1994, the day that NAFTA was signed between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, an armed uprising of indigenous campesinos of Chiapas, Mexico announced a different vision of Mexico’s present and future. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation fought with arms for only 12 days. For the subsequent twelve years, they have been conducting a different kind of radical political struggle—a “revolution to make a revolution possible.” In this course we will examine the formation, practices, discourse, and goals of Zapatismo, at the same time considering directly the question of how to understand a social movement. We will look at a variety of different narrations and images that have been produced by participants, scholars, journalists, and imagemakers, and ask about their impact on our understanding of Zapatismo. During the semester, students will have the opportunity to examine primary documents and engage in the kind of thinking that scholars who chronicle social movements do.
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Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program (CLPP) Population and Development Program Community Partnerships for Social Change Program Some organizations students have recently worked with include: CASES (Center for Alternative Sentencing & Employment Services), New York, New York; Boston Institute of Art Therapy, Boston, Massachusetts; LYRIC (Lesbian Youth Resource & Information Center), San Francisco, California; and BUST Magazine, New York, New York. |
Contact Us
Hampshire College
893 West Street
Amherst, MA 01002
413.559.5378
Fax 413.559.6081
dof@hampshire.edu