About:

About this class

Publics and Counter-Publics: Contemporary Social Issues and Movements: From anti-vaccination conspiracies to QANON, the present social and political arena seems awash in misinformation and disinformation. This course will situate our current social and political moment within the modern history of propaganda and public truth-telling, so as to better understand how members of various communities come to make decisions about matters of public and personal concern. This course will be structured around key contemporary issues and the social movements that have initiated and organized around them.

This is a 6-week virtual class using the Zoom platform. Mondays: March 14, 21, 28, April 4, 11, 18, 6-8 pm CST

Robert Mejia is the Communications Manager at A New Way of Life Reentry Project in Los Angeles, California. Before joining A New Way of Life, Mejia was an Associate Professor of Communication at North Dakota State University. He earned his PhD in Communications with an emphasis in Media and Cultural Studies, minor in Gender & Women Studies, and certificate in Criticism and Interpretive Theory from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

HND Value Statement

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this {article, book, exhibition, film, program, database, report, Web resource}, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Humanities North Dakota.

However, in an increasingly polarized world, we at Humanities North Dakota believe that being open-minded is necessary to thinking critically and rationally.

Therefore, our programs and classes reflect our own open-mindedness in the inquiry, seeking, and acquiring of scholars to speak at our events and teach classes for our Public University.

To that end, we encourage our participants to join us in stepping outside our comfort zones and considering other perspectives and ideas by being open-minded while attending HND events featuring scholars who hold a variety of opinions, some being opposite of our own held beliefs.