Current Economic and Social Issues: Explanations, Action and Solutions

This program will address major contemporary issues such as poverty and economic inequality, immigration, health care, incarceration, climate change and war. We will examine explanations put forward for them from different political, economic and philosophical perspectives and look at their human impact in light of class, race and gender. We will place these issues into a global context. We will also study how social movements have actively addressed these problems and investigate their strategies and their short- and long-term proposals and solutions.

We will analyze the mainstream and alternative media coverage of current issues and of the social movements dealing with them. In addition, we will study how theoretical frameworks such as neoclassical economics, liberalism, Marxism, feminism, and anarchism explain the causes and provide solutions to these economic and social problems.

We will choose the specific issues to be addressed as spring 2010 approaches, so that our study will be as relevant as possible. For each topic studied, we will combine readings from a variety of genres with lectures, films, and workshops, along with guest speakers and field trips as appropriate to observe problems and responses first hand. We will approach issues on multiple levels: factual description, narratives of those directly affected, theories that place issues in a larger and historical context, and specific techniques for analyzing causes and possible solutions. Our goal is to develop the in-depth analysis skills essential for effective action.

As a final project, students will produce a popular education piece that can take the form of writing, performance, film, or some other medium of communication and is the product of research into a social or economic issue of current interest and importance.