SPCM 4360 - Course Overview

The rhetorical nature, function, development, and impact of social movements as applied to one or more case studies.

Instructor: Thomas M. Lessl, Ph.D., Associate Professor, The University of Georgia.

Text and Materials: Stewart, Smith, and Denton, Persuasion and Social Movements, 4th ed., Waveland Press, 2001; Videotape rentals required: Eyes on the Prize: Awakenings and Eyes on the Prize: No Easy Walk, both available for rent at most local video stores.

Course Overview

Course Description

This course explains how people organize to bring about changes in society through social movements. Whereas many people such as salespersons, clergy, executives, and teachers work individually to influence others, this course focuses upon large groups that cooperate to bring about social change. This course emphasizes the communication that takes place in social movements. For example, historically women in the United States worked collectively to win the right to vote and to gain equal opportunities for employment, advancement, education, and public office. Other groups have mobilized social movements for the benefit of Native Americans, African Americans, industrial workers, farmers, and a variety of persons with diverse interests.

In this interesting course, you will learn how social movements originate, what stages they are likely to go through, and what kinds of communicative efforts are required by those involved if they are to be successful. Social movements do not take place by chance. Citizens must organize, select leaders, plan public meetings, raise funds, distribute pamphlets, arrange for transportation, plan persuasive strategies, and follow through with these arrangements.

In the first ten lessons, you will be involved in two kinds of study:

1. Learning principles and insights from the assigned textbook, Persuasion and Social Movements, Third Edition, by Stewart, Smith, and Denton.

2. Applying principles and insights from the textbook to case studies of the contemporary civil rights social movement observed on two segments of the video recordings from the Eyes on the Prize series shown on Public Television.

For Lesson 11 you are to write a six-page mini term paper that grows out of a few of the first ten lessons. For more about this interesting project, see Lesson 11.

Advice for Completing the Lessons Successfully

Before writing your response to each lesson, read the instructions carefully. No matter how conscientious your driving habits, if you are on the wrong road to Atlanta, Georgia, you will not arrive there. The same is true when doing these lessons. You must follow the instructions carefully so you will be on the right track.

Type, print, or write your responses to each assignment clearly. If you cannot write clearly, please type or print.

If you write or print, please use a ballpoint pen that enables you to make dark letters that can be read easily. If you type or print with computer, please be sure you use a good ribbon.

Whether you type, print, or write, please double space between lines when responding to all the lessons.

Check your spelling, grammar, word choice, and punctuation thoroughly. Remember this slogan, "Anyone can do it correctly the second time!" Employers are looking for persons to hire who can do it right the first time. So do not mail a lesson prematurely and, later, wish you had proofread it more carefully before forwarding it. After you finish a good draft, wait a day before mailing. Proofread it when your mind is rested, make final changes, and turn in an assignment that is correct the first time! Take pride in your work. Just as your clothes and behavior make statements about you, so do your spelling, grammar, word choice, and punctuation reflect upon your motivation, concern, and understanding. Use your written responses to these lessons as opportunities to practice clear thinking and coherent writing, just as one must rehearse conscientiously to play the banjo or piano. If you discover minor mistakes after you complete a lesson, it is fine to pencil in those corrections neatly rather than having to retype the entire lesson.

To build a point purposefully, vary your wording rather than get bogged down with the same few words, like a pickup truck stuck in Georgia red clay. By looking in a thesaurus, you can find several words than mean the same as the one with which you are working. Do not mail a lesson until it is in a condition of which you can be proud!

When answering questions, put your thoughts in your own words. While it is acceptable to quote two or three key words from your textbook from time to time, they should be an enlargement of your own conclusions and wording. Do not simply quote long segments out of the book. Draw inferences of your own from your textbook and from the two video recordings from the Eyes on the Prize series.

Review the comments you receive from me on each assignment you turn in before you mail the next one. Of course, as soon as you finish a lesson and mail it, begin the next one. But do not mail a new lesson until you have received my reaction about the other one. Then you can make needed changes on the draft on which you have been working before mailing it, benefitting from my comments on the other one. By following this routine, you will have a better understanding of what is expected, as does a golfer who watches someone putt before he or she has to putt.

The first ten lessons have two basic types of questions. They are: (1) questions about principles learned from your textbook and (2) questions that ask you to apply principles you learn from your textbook to observations made about the two video recordings from the Eyes on the Prize series.

Video Recordings

In several of the lessons you will apply principles learned in the textbook to two different video recordings of Eyes on the Prize, a series on the contemporary civil rights movement in the United States shown several times over public television.

You will need to have access to only two of the video segments from that Eyes on the Prize television series. Those two video segments are:

1. Eyes on the Prize: Awakenings. This video recording focuses upon several incidents that occurred to African Americans in the southern region of the United States, with some emphasis placed upon the boycott of city buses by African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama, beginning in 1955. On the video you will see how that boycott began, how it was organized, the kinds of specific tasks that persons had to accomplish, and how young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others provided leadership for hundreds of citizens who were involved in that social movement.
2. Eyes on the Prize: No Easy Walk. This second video recording highlights three case studies from the contemporary civil rights movement: the Albany, Georgia, protest; the Birmingham, Alabama, demonstrations; and the March on Washington, DC.

To complete this course, you must have access to these two video segments of the television series Eyes on the Prize. Students having access to The University of Georgia Library will find the two required segments from the Eyes on the Prize series in that library. You also can play those videotapes in The University of Georgia Main Library. The office of Instructional Resources Center (IRC), housed in the facility between the Journalism and Psychology buildings, also has these two videos available. If you have access to other libraries, check to see if they house the two videotapes.

I checked with Blockbuster Video and found that they do rent the above tapes. Other companies also may rent them. Before renting the video recordings, however, it will save you time, frustration, and possibly rental fees if you read over all of the first ten Written Assignments. I make this suggestion because several of those lessons require that you illustrate principles and insights learned in the textbook from discoveries made when viewing the video recordings.

For example, Lessons 2 and 3 depend upon each other. In other words, in Lesson 2 you study about the stages of social movements in the textbook. Then in Lesson 3 you actually observe some of those stages at work in real life by means of the video recording, Eyes on the Prize: Awakenings.

Lessons 4 and 5 also depend upon each other. In Lesson 4 you study about leadership in social movements. Then in Lesson 5 you identify principles of leadership in the second video recording, Eyes on the Prize: No Easy Walk.

Other lessons also have you apply principles studied in the textbook to either the video recordings from the Eyes on the Prize series or to chapters at the End of your textbook.

Grading

Your grade in this course will be determined in this way. First, I will figure your average on the first ten lessons and the term paper. For example, if you make 82 ("B") on each of those ten lessons and the term paper, your average for all of those will be 82 ("B"). Then I will determine your grade on the final examination. For example, you might make a 91 ("A") on the final examination. To determine your grade in the course, then, I would add 82 (the average figured on the basis of scores on the first ten lessons and term paper) and 91 (score on final examination), and divide by 2, thereby arriving at a final grade for the course, which would be 86 ("B"). You can see from this example that half of your grade depends upon your score on the final examination. Be certain you keep and review all of your lessons, along with my comments, when preparing for the final examination. Those lessons should also help you when writing the mini term paper.

You must pass the final to pass the course, regardless of grades earned on lessons. You are responsible for knowing and abiding by Independent Study policies and procedures. See your Student Handbook for detailed information.

Mini Term Paper

After you complete the first ten lessons, you will be asked to write a four-page paper that grows out of work done in this course, drawing upon your study of the textbook and the two video recordings from the Eyes on the Prize series. See Lesson 11 for specific instructions concerning the mini term paper.

Final Examination

The final examination will cover the entire course. It will consist of "structured" essay questions that ask you to focus upon specific principles and possibly to apply them to case studies (as you did when completing the first ten lessons). Your answers to these structured questions may be relatively brief.

Final examination questions will follow closely the Lesson Objectives and Written Assignment for each lesson. Here is a sample question I might ask: "In your textbook, you learned about the stages of social movements. Briefly explain what takes place in the first stage of a social movement." As I noted above, some questions may have you apply principles to case studies of social movements. For additional sample questions that might be included on the final examination, see About the Final Examination, following Lesson 11.

There will be no true/false, identification, or multiple-choice questions.