Political protest is ubiquitous, whether it takes a spontaneous or organised form, involves a single individual or group action, whether it is tolerated or suppressed. The United States’ constitution guarantees the citizenry the right to ‘assemble, protest and petition’ in its First Amendment; authoritarian systems are obviously less liberal. Protest may be directed against an occupation regime - witness the acts of narguer les Allemands in Paris in the early 1940s or Jan Pallach’s suicide by self-immolation in January 1969 at the Wenceslaus statue in Prague. Protest may involve slogans – Steve Biko’s ‘black is beautiful’ slogan of the Black Consciousness Movement in apartheid South Africa in the 1970s; it may be in the form of graffiti (sous les paves, la plage) or it may involve gestures – Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ ‘Black Power Salute’ at the 1968 Olympics. Protest may claim the street – witness the Occupy Wall Street protest against corporate greed and corruption; it may control the square – the demonstration in Parliament Square in London against increased tuition fees for students or the ‘pots and pans revolution’ in the Alþingi square in Reykjavík fuelled by the banking crisis. Political protest may be expressed through the ballot boxes, as in support for the anti-bail-out parties in the Greek parliamentary elections in May and June 2012, or by abstaining from voting. It may be anti-globalisation, anti-imperialist, anti-nuclear, anti-immigrant, anti-modernisation, anti-austerity or simply anti-establishment in character. This course is about protest politics – protest songs, protest slogans, individual protest, protest parties, protest movements and non-conventional protest action. It considers the variety of forms of protest, various theories of political protest and the significance of protest as a motor of political change. The course will proceed on a lecture/seminar basis and assessment will be by class participation and a written assignment.

Obligatory pre-registration by email to David Arter (firstname.lastname@uta.fi) by 17 December.

Assessment will be on the basis of class participation and course essay.

Indicative lectures for the course:

1. Introduction: Protest is Ubiquitous
2. Claiming the Walls: Graffiti as Political Protest
3. Narguer les Allemands: Individual Acts of Political Protest
4. Seizing the Streets and Squares: From Tiananmen to Wall Street
5. Feminist Protest: the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp
6. Donald Trump versus Scotland and Wind Turbines: Nimbo Protest
7. The Anti-Nuclear Movement: Strategies and Success
8. Protest Through the Ballot Boxes: A Golden Dawn?
9. Protest Cycling and Cycles of Protest
10. Conclusions