Social Movement Literature introduces readers to the study of those cultural texts that have come to define modern social movements. Looking at movements such as the US civil rights movement, gay liberation movement, environmental movement, and contemporary movement such as #metoo and Black Lives Matter, this volume focuses not just on the texts that social movements have produced, but also on those that have inspired and been inspired by those movements. As such, Social Movement Literature seeks to address a number of key questions: how do social movements develop and present not just their goals, but also their broader identities, using texts and other media? How are these movement texts received and further disseminated? Are there common features across movement texts? How and why do some of these texts continue to resonate today? By combining both textual and historical approaches to the analysis of social movements, this volume aims to give readers both an understanding of how social movements emerge and why they remain both political and culturally relevant today.
Introduction: Social Movements in the Present
Chapter One: Social Movements and Their Texts
Chapter Two: How to Read a Movement Text
Chapter Three: Movement Frames
Chapter Four: Injustice
Chapter Five: Identity
Chapter Six: Agency
Chapter Seven: Memory
Conclusion: A Movement Society?
Bibliography
Biography
Stephen Schneider is Associate Professor of English at the University of Louisville. He earned his PhD in English, with a focus on rhetoric and composition, from the Pennsylvania State University in 2007. His book, You Can’t Padlock an Idea: Rhetorical Education at the Highlander Folk School, 1932-1961, was published by the University of South Carolina Press in 2014 and examines the educational programs that Highlander used to support labor and civil rights activists. His essays have appeared in College English, College Composition and Communication, Journal of Advanced Composition, Technical Communication Quarterly, as well as edited volumes on the rhetoric of sit-in protests and engaged writing pedagogies.
