Global Studies Questions

Q1.

Please answer EITHER question A or B:

• What role did student activism in the Bay Area play in the emergence of the Black Panther Party? In your answer, be sure to mention at least one specific student organizations and at least two individuals involved with them who contributed, directly or indirectly, to the Black Panther Party’s ideals and formation.
• Describe the emergence of the Third World Liberation Front student movement during the late 1960s. What were two of its goals? What were two of the student groups involved? Was the student movement successful? Mention at least one of the tactics it utilized.

Q2.

Please answer EITHER question C or D:

• Discuss some of the shortcomings of second wave feminism (i.e. the women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s that we discussed in week 6). What misconceptions did some white feminist organizers and intellectuals have regarding Black and Puerto Rican women and their apprehensions about the movement to secure legal and easily accessible abortions for women in the US?
• What were the origins of the Chicano movement? Discuss at least two of the ideological influences and two historical figures that provided inspiration for the movement, as well as two organizations associated with the movement.

Q3.

Please answer EITHER question E or F:

E.) How was the Free South Africa Movement able to achieve its goal of helping to end apartheid in South Africa? What strategies did it use? In your answer, be sure to include at least one characteristic of the Free South Africa Movement’s general approach to the problem of apartheid and two of the concrete actions the movement undertook.

F.) What factors made the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Conservative movement attractive to non-elites? What competing explanations did these movements provide for the rising inequality that non-elites faced throughout the US?

Q4.

Please answer EITHER question I or II:

• What factors led to the rise of neoliberalism as a dominant political force in the US toward the end of the twentieth century? In your answer, be sure to discuss the relationship between neoliberalism and the conservative movement, which emerged during the 1970s and 80s among those unhappy with the rise of progressive social movements like the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, the Black Power movement, the Women’s movement, etc. Do you agree with Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen’s depiction of neoliberalism as a “social movement from above?”
• In the second half of the course, we discussed a number of social movements that took place during the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries including the Free South Africa Movement, Occupy Wall Street, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and the movement for climate justice. How are these movements similar to or different from the social movements we studied prior to week 7? Given these similarities and differences, how would you say progressive activism has evolved in the aftermath of neoliberalism?