Brian Highsmith

Harvard University

This seminar explore how place structures power in the American political economy. The course focus on the consequences of institutional design: how the law mediates the relationships between economic geography and racialized hierarchy, corporate power, and the terms of democratic citizenship.

Brian Highsmith

Princeton University

This seminar explores the institutional stakes of geography for economic opportunity and democratic representation, focusing on racial separation and subjugation in the United State. The first part of the course considers how law and policy help determine where people reside; the remainder explores how and why “place” matters.

Nicholas F. Stump

West Virginia University College of Law

Law, Social Movements, and Social Change, a 2-credit course offered as a seminar or general elective, centers Appalachia and rural America in its explorations of major course topics and themes.

Specifically, the course explores the dynamic relationship between social movements and law, examining how movements for social change both shape and are shaped by law, policy, and deeper socio-legal transformations. Through the lens of critical legal theories, we also will interrogate the complex role of lawyers and legal advocates within social movements. Topics of focus include transformative movements for racial, gender, and economic justice, climate change and the environment, labor struggles, LGBTQ+ rights and liberation, Indigenous liberation, and emancipatory movements from the Global South. Appalachian and rural social movements are a central through-line of this course, and intersections are explored among such regional movements and broader national and international grassroots struggles.