On September 11, 1906, at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa, a young lawyer from India inaugurated a force like none other. That force would spread around the world from Africa to Asia to Europe and the Americas and back. The lawyer was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) and the potent force he launched on that historic day was subsequently christened satyagraha, a particular kind of revolutionary non-violent weapon for change. Gandhian non-violence, in turn, has been nurtured and translated by people all across the world, most famously by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. This course will examine closely the tradition of non-violent resistance as developed by Gandhi and translated by King. Our focus will be both on the idiom of non-violent social change and on the practice of connected history.

The course meets the Upper-Level Writing requirement. There will be a series of minor and major writing requirements throughout the semester, culminating in a final research paper (approximately 15 to 20 pages) based on primary sources.

Course Requirements:

Major Research paper using primary sources

Intended Audience:

History Majors

Class Format:

Seminar