The 2022-2023 Altman Program: Contesting Authority

In the episode by Grace Seifert and Micaela Anders, they hone in on two examples of what exactly contesting authority can look like. Both of them focused on events in American history, specifically times in which the authority of the US government and military was challenged. Grace looked at the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 and the subsequent events, and Micaela looked at a white, working-class town during the Vietnam War. In contexts that are seemingly so different, they realized that manifestations of contesting authority are not always obvious, and the ability to contest authority is often limited by aspects of identity, such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Sometimes, such as in the case of the Dakota people, mere existence is a way to contest authority; other times, such as in working-class America in the Vietnam War, it is the simple internal recognition that an authority is flawed; and, other times, it is the protesting emblematic of the anti-war movement and civil rights movements of the 1960s. 

Comments are closed.