Building on the momentum of the Arab Spring and European Squares Movements, Occupy Wall Street burst on to the scene in the Fall of 2011 and quickly took the world by storm. Arguably the most important social movement the United States had seen since the 1970s, Occupy reshaped the American political landscape over the next decade and beyond, influencing Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ movements, the Fight for 15, and the Bernie Sanders campaign. This is an interdisciplinary course that analyzes where the Occupy movement came from, what it meant, and the influence it has had around the world through the lens of scholarship in fields such as anthropology, sociology, political science, history, urban studies, psychology, film studies, and media studies. We will analyze primary sources, secondary analyses, documentary and feature films, music, art, and more.
About Mark Bray
Mark Bray is a historian of human rights, terrorism, and politics in Modern Europe. He earned his BA in Philosophy from Wesleyan University in 2005 and his PhD in History from Rutgers University in 2016. He is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House 2017), Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street (Zero 2013), The Anarchist Inquisition: Terrorism and Human Rights in Spain and France, 1890-1910 (forthcoming on Cornell University Press), and the co-editor of Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader (PM Press 2018). His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Salon, Boston Review, and numerous edited volumes.