HIS 3340 RIOTS AND DISORDER IN AMERICA
This course analyzes the fundamental causes and consequences of civil disorder in America from the early colonial period to today. Riots are often perceived as random, irrational, and ephemeral events instigated by those opposing 'civilization' or an existing social order. However, we seek to recast collective violence as pressure gauges for deep-rooted patterns of religious intolerance, racial discrimination and the like. Riots, though, are often extra-legal strategies by those in power to buttress social hierarchies constructed along racial/religious/class lines, and have thus led to clarion calls for reparations in recent years. Through case studies of colonial effigy burning, pro-Revolutionary War riots, Civil War disorders, massacres in the New South, WW II-era attacks on black communities, WW II dislocations, the 1960's conflagrations through urban America, the 1992 L.A. uprising, and the Black Lives Matter revolts, riots emerge as periodic reminders of conflicted and shifting nature of American values, pointing backward to a preceding social disequilibrium, and forward as powerful agents of social change and purposive political activity.