CoursesCritical Writing: Organizing for Social Justice
WRIT 0021/307

Critical Writing: Organizing for Social Justice

During times that seem politically bleak, you might ask: how is it possible to create lasting social change? What does it mean to organize? What can justice look like in practice? This course examines how change is created incrementally, in the everyday, and in response to structures of oppression, and how it is possible to renew the power of the collective and of the imagination. We will read Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba’s Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care to examine how organizers enact the hard work of transformative social and political change. Through theoretical, historical, ethnographic, and practical examples, students will gain an understanding of political mobilization and movement building across different contexts. Student research will focus on contemporary movements for justice, articulating their analyses for different audiences through their white paper and op-ed projects.

Instructor(s)
  • Dilshanie Perera
Semester

Fall 2026

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This is an SNF Paideia designated writing seminar, designed to examine and encourage dialogue across differences. Students and faculty participating in the Paideia writing seminar cluster will have an opportunity to meet once a month for dinner, dialogue, and a keynote speaker or facilitator, as well as engage in other cross seminar community building activities. SNF Paideia designated courses are noted on student transcripts. This seminar fulfills the writing requirement, follows the same curriculum, and has the same workload, assessment process, and standards as all other critical writing seminars at Penn. Seminar topics vary in academic discipline but each relates back to the SNF Paideia program’s core values of informed civil discourse and deliberation. Only first-year students are eligible to enroll in SNF Paideia designated writing seminars.

Students with a semester level of Junior, Sophomore or Senior may not enroll.

Students in the LPS BAAS and Online Certs, LPS Prof Masters or LPS UG Programs divisions may not enroll.

TR 1:45pm-3:14pm

Instructor: Dilshanie Perera

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