Spring 2025: Care
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Readings:
From Palestine to Turtle Island: Food as a weapon of colonialism and tool of liberation
The Secret Gardens of Nablus: Community and food security under occupation
Falafel King: Culinary Customs and National Narratives in Palestine
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Reading:
Love in a Fucked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together
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Readings:
“Allegiance to Gratitude”
“Epiphany in the Beans”
from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Fall 2024: Revolution
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Guiding Questions
What is the role of care in revolution?
How should we implement care?
What role does care play in a post-revolution world?
Weekly Readings
Re-Imagining Wellness in the Age of Neoliberalism by Sarah Badr
Sick Woman Theory by Johanna Hedva
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Guiding Questions
Think of a societal change you hope to see one day—our focus is on the means by which such hopes turn into reality.
What strategies and tools do you think will be most effective at realizing it?
What role does revolution play in your answer? Why? What strategies and tools may be most effective at building revolution?
What forms the greatest obstacle to your desired change? How do your previous answers address them?
Weekly Readings
On the importance of organization and strategy in evading repression and building revolution: What Is To Be Done? by Vladimir Lenin
Historical reading (~4,000 words):
Extra credit: Podcast providing historical context and connections to the present (1h55m long). Spotify link, Apple Music link
On the power of a people organized and agitating from below: The Many-Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker
“A Motley Crew in the American Revolution,” pp. 211-214
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Guiding Questions
Is violence a necessary component of revolution?
What role does non-violence serve in protest
Does activism fall short of realizing the broader goals of a protest?
Weekly Readings
“If Black English Isn’t a Language Then Tell Me, What Is?” by James Baldwin
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Guiding Questions
How did the Cuban revolution start? How was victory gained?
What was the impact of the Cuban Revolution? Did history absolve Castro?
Do the negative/imperfect parts of the aftermath of a revolution outweigh the positive components?
Weekly Reading
“History will absolve me” (excerpt) by Fidel Castro
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Guiding Questions
What is the current U.S. voting system’s place in the U.S.?
Does the current voting system allow for radical action and imagination?
What is voting’s role in a revolution?
Weekly Readings
“Voting is Not Harm Reduction: an Indigenous Perspective” by Indigenous Action
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Guiding Questions
How do we define terrorism and legitimate violence?
Why don’t we see violent resistance in the U.S.?
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Guiding Questions
Where do we see violence?
In which situations do we normalize it?
How does the violence of the state differ from the violent resistance of oppressed people?
Weekly Readings
“Mandela and the Question of Violence” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Guiding Questions
How does civil disobedience define itself in America?
What is the masses' conception of it?
What is protest?
Can nonviolence be revolutionary?
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Guiding Questions
Can a group “of” a university really be abolitionist?
What is the MJLC’s place in the abolitionist movement?
Weekly Readings
Ch. 2 of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study, “The University and the Undercommons”
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Guiding Questions
What is the carceral state?
Where is UW-Madison's place within it?
Weekly Readings
So you want to acknowledge the land? by Summer Wilkie
Ebony and Ivy, Chapter 1 - The Edges of the Empire: Colleges in the Arsenal of European Imperialism by Craig Steven Wilder
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