American Manifestos: Politics and Rhetorical Strategies 4219-SC0022
What role did grassroots publishing play in the development of social movements in the United States? What rhetorical strategies were employed to mobilize political action? How has the manifesto genre changed under the influence of various activist groups that have used it across time? Finally, how could it be used today?
Increasingly more manifestos are getting published by popular academic presses testifying to the recent resurgence of this politically engaged genre. In this course, students will explore the manifesto’s rich history, its rhetorical conventions, as well as the role it has played in shaping various American art and social movements. We will closely examine historical and contemporary texts, focusing on their persuasive strategies and strands of political theory they represent. From the Declaration of Independence and The Communist Manifesto, through the writings of the avant-garde, the New Left, the Civil Rights and the Women’s Liberation movements, amongst others, the course uses the manifesto genre as a common thread to travel through a vast stretch of US activist history and concludes with contemporary writings of the Black Lives Matter, queer and transnational feminist movements. As part of the assessment criteria, course participants will be encouraged to put theoretical knowledge into practice by writing their own manifestos on their topic of choice.
Topics include, amongst others:
- The genealogy and development of the manifesto as a distinct literary genre
- The difficulties in defining the manifesto: where artistic expression meets political action
- Importance of grassroots publishing practices in social movement formation
- The American avant-garde and performativity of the manifesto genre
- Rhetorics of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements
- Gender and genre: from New Left movement manifestos to the feminist second wave
- The diverse tones of manifesto writing: rage, (dis)respectability and positionality
- Queer resistance then and now
- Migration and displacement: Chicana and Indigenous manifestos
- Revival of manifesto writing: what makes this genre so compelling today?
Type of course
Mode
Prerequisites (description)
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Knowledge
Upon completing this course, students will:
be familiar with the stylistic and rhetorical features of the manifesto genre,
understand how the manifesto genre has been adapted and employed by various American social movements,
be familiar with the key political doctrines and social critiques articulated by activist groups covered in this course.
Skills
Upon completing this course, students will be able to:
critically analyze political documents such as social movement manifestos,
conduct a close literary analysis of short-form political texts such as manifestos,
put theoretical knowledge into practice by writing their own manifesto,
contextualize both historical and contemporary manifestos within relevant political and socio-cultural frameworks.
Competences
Upon completing this course, students will be able to:
engage in classroom debates, formulate and present their own ideas and respond to differing viewpoints,
create and deliver concise presentations on a given topic, including conducting independent research and preparing visually compelling supporting materials,
demonstrate academic writing skills through short analytical essays and manifesto writing.
Assessment criteria
20 points: Active participation in class
20 points: Presentation
30 points: Three short papers (2 responses to assigned readings and 1 manifesto project)
30 points: Final exam
Bibliography
We will read a variety of theoretical texts to examine the history of the manifesto genre, its rhetorical conventions and learn about various social movements that have used it throughout US history. We will then put this knowledge to analyzing a selection of historical and contemporary manifestos.
Examples of secondary readings include:
Caws, Mary Ann. “The Poetics of the Manifesto: Nowness and Newness.” In Manifesto: A Century of Isms, xix–xxxi. University of Nebraska Press, 2001.
Fahs, Breanne. “Introduction. The Bleeding Edge: On the Necessity of Feminist Manifestos.” In Burn It Down!: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution, 1–21. Verso Books, 2020.
Hanna, Julian. The Manifesto Handbook: 95 Theses on an Incendiary Form. Zero Books, 2020.
Houghton, Ruth, and Aoife O’Donoghue. “Manifestos as Constituent Power: Performing a Feminist Revolution.” Global Constitutionalism 12, no. 3 (2022): 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2045381722000132.
Pearce, Kimber Charles. “The Radical Feminist Manifesto as Generic Appropriation: Gender, Genre, and Second Wave Resistance.” The Southern Communication Journal 64, no. 4 (1999): 307–315. doi:10.1080/10417949909373145.
Puchner, Martin. Poetry of the Revolution: Marx Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes. Princeton University Press, 2005.
Yanoshevsky, Galia. “Three Decades of Writing on Manifesto: The Making of a Genre.” Poetics Today 30, no. 2 (2009): 257–286. doi:10.1215/03335372-2008-010.
Examples of manifestos covered in this course include: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848), The Port Huron Statement by the Students for a Democratic Society (1962), Black Panther Party’s What We Want, What We Believe (1966), Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo by Casey Hayden and Mary King (1965), the SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas (1967), the Gay Liberation Front Manifesto (1971), the Combahee River Collective Statement (1977), Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” (1985) and Feminism for the 99% by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser (2019).
The final reading list is subject to change.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: