The Institute for Common Power strives to facilitate the creation of a just and inclusive democracy while working to eliminate racial inequity. Education can and must lead to action. To this end, the Institute offers a series of courses taught by award-winning scholars who are widely recognized experts in their fields of study. The courses provide clear, comprehensive examinations of multiple topics related to race, culture, and politics in America.
We are pleased and excited to partner with the University of Washington Department of Medicine to bring foundational courses to the public. The UW Department of Medicine understands that social change in all forms relies on education.
Each course has been designed to be as interactive as a participant wishes. You can participate by asking and answering questions during live sessions, or simply watch the recording of the sessions at their convenience. Each course will last three to four weeks, and class will meet once during each of those weeks. Once registered, each participant will receive a course syllabus that includes suggestions for continued learning.
If you register and are unable to attend, a video recording will be made available for you for two weeks following the end of the course.
Teachers: You could be able to get continuing education credit for these courses. Please contact Dr. Terry Anne Scott, Director of the Institute for Common Power, with any questions (terry@commonpower.org).
Registrants who complete five courses will be awarded a certificate of excellence.
CALENDAR OF COURSES.
CALENDAR OF COURSES.
January 2, 9, 16, 2024
Dr. Cathleen Cahill
Practicing Democracy: Women’s Political Activism in the Progressive Era
This foundational course explores women’s political activity and strategies. Women in US history have always been politically engaged, though the forms of their activism have varied throughout time. This class we primarily focus on women in the Progressive Era, a period spanning the 1890s through WWI. Historians often describe it as a moment of modernization in which Americans confronted issues that remain with us today such as racism and segregation, labor activism, immigration agitation, environmental conservation, and calls for sexual equality. With a focus on a group of diverse women, we will explore their creative and powerful efforts to address these issues and change their world. In doing so, we will consider what motivated them to become active. What kinds of resistance they faced. How they overcome obstacles. And how they strategically fought for what they believed in. Although we will focus on individual stories, they were not exceptional, but representative of many other women who fought for equality, dignity, and justice. Their stories are inspiring for today's activists and lessons to be learned from as well.
February 6, 13, 20, 2024
Black history Month!
Dr. Terry Anne Scott
Slavery in America: Inconceivable Struggle and Profound Resistance among African Americans
In this foundational course, Dr. Terry Anne Scott will survey the struggles and accomplishments of people of African descent in the United States during the institution of slavery. While some attention will be paid to African origins, the three sessions in this series will analyze the historical path from importation through the Civil War and the process of freedom. Through a largely, but not exclusively, chronological approach, Dr. Scott will emphasize how African Americans have worked to determine the trajectory of their own lives and worked to resist and perservere. Areas of exploration will include, but are not limited to, the following: the construction of racial identity and alterity, the slave family and community, the domestic slave trade, resistance and the process of freedom.
PREVIOUS COURSES
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Reconstruction and the Rise of Jim Crow
Dr. Terry Anne Scott
Reconstruction in America was marked by triumphs and tragedies that collectively worked to usher in a century of Black sovereignty as well as legal and extralegal expressions of white supremacy. Join Dr. Terry Anne Scott as she explores the varied contours of Reconstruction, with particular attention paid to Black freedom expressions and the building of community.
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Women and the Politics of History
Dr. Cathleen D. Cahill
This course begins with the questions why history matters and why it can be so contested. Many of our contemporary debates such as those over the removal of Confederate Monuments or the 1619 Project grapple with these questions, but they are not new. This course explores contested histories in the period from roughly the 1870s to the 1930s, or between Reconstruction and the New Deal. Although extremely few women were professional historians at the time, diverse groups of women played important roles in the writing, conservation, dissemination, and contestation of US history in this period. Our sessions will therefore focus on several moments where these discussions and debates were particularly visible including the writing of women's suffrage history, contests over the history of slavery and the Civil War, and how ideas about who has a history shaped federal Indian policy.
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Brick by Brick: The Fight to Vote and for American Democracy
Dr. David Domke
We are now three major election cycles since Donald Trump blew up American democracy in 2016. The fight for voting and democracy are center stage as we work toward a more just and inclusive world. We stand in the eye of the hurricane: we are surviving an onslaught of voter suppression and we are making genuine progress in the fight to vote, AND an extremely conservative Supreme Court is poised in spring 2023 to potentially overturn the power -- the common power -- of a democratic electorate making their voices heard. This course, consisting of three related lectures, will explore the fight for the right to vote and American democracy with a clear eye toward 2024. Brick by brick, the battle for building a more just and inclusive democracy is at hand.
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Slavery in America: From Origins to Emancipation
Dr. Terry Anne Scott
In this foundational course, Dr. Terry Anne Scott will survey the struggles and accomplishments of people of African descent in the United States during slavery. While some attention will be paid to African origins, the three sessions in this series will analyze the historical path from importation through the Civil War and the process of freedom. Through a largely, but not exclusively, chronological approach, Dr. Scott will emphasize how African Americans have worked to determine the trajectory of their own lives. Areas of exploration will include, but are not limited to, the following: the construction of racial identity and alterity, the slave family and community, the domestic slave trade, resistance and the process of freedom.
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The US Civil Rights Movement
Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s transformed America. It ended legalized racial segregation, extended the franchise to Black southerners, and created unprecedented job, business, and housing opportunities for Black northerners. But it also left a great deal undone. This course explains the origin, evolution, and outcomes of the Civil Rights Movement. In approach, it looks at the movement from the bottom-up and the inside-out, aiming to make clear how everyday Black people made America a fairer and more just - if still imperfect - society.
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From Selma to Stonewall: Civil Rights and LGBTQ+ Rights, An Uneasy Alliance
Dr. Meredith Bagley
This lecture series surveys the tensions and solidarity points between the struggles for African American Civil Rights and LGBTQ+ Rights. We will examine queer-identified figures within the Civil Rights movement - after laying a working foundation for LGBTQ+ terminology - before moving forward to the ways the two movements overlap, inform, and occasionally exist in tension. Through a largely, but not exclusively, chronological approach, this four-part series will examine Black Lesbian Feminism, the Stonewall Riots, Marriage Equality, and the current crisis over gender-affirming health care.
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From the Black Panther Movement to Black Lives Matter: Understanding the Contemporary Origins of Black Radical Activism
Dr. Donna Murch
This course will explore the contemporary roots of the Movement for Black Lives in the long Black freedom movement, which spans much of the twentieth century. Central to this history is the emergence of the Black Panther Party. We will explore the direct connection between the two organizations as well as how historical conditions shaped their visions of Black Liberation.
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"Lost Cause Politics": Jefferson Davis to George Wallace to Donald Trump
Dr. David Domke
This Institute for Common Power foundational course traces the arc of what we can call “Lost Cause Politics” from (a) the post-Civil War Confederate South through (b) the 1950s-60s Massive Resistance to Civil Rights to c) today’s MAGA Big Lie about the 2020 Election. There is a clear through line of white victimhood and racism, voter intimidation and repression, and profound political struggle. It has defined us and continues to influence us. What can we learn from previous eras and how do we apply it to our work toward a multi-racial democracy? This course sets the table for the 2024 elections, which will include the most chaotic, dangerous, and unpredictable presidential campaign in modern American history.
