Professor Amanda Waterhouse is one of the IU Fellowship Doctoral students who is here at Butler teaching for the year. Next semester, she will be offering a continuation of her FYS: Student Power as well as a new course, Urban History of Latin America. Both of these course are new to Butler this year and with her specific expertise, she offers a different perspective on these issues for our current students.
Why do you feel that it is important to teach first year students about student power?
Students are often implicitly taught to accept the world as it is, or, if they want to change things, to do so through institutions in ways that do not directly threaten existing power structures. I think it is a critical part of ethical college teaching to invite students to question that belief in ways that might challenge the very institutions or classrooms in which they learn. In a more socially connected way, we are running out of time to fix the many global inequalities and harmful policies that structure our country and our world, especially related to climate change. In some regions of the world, especially in Latin America, where I did my doctoral research, student activists take on a large role in civic and political life, both historically and today. I believe that we need more young people in the United States to heed the lessons of history and hear the call of political inspiration to help build new powerful collective movements that will benefit us all.
Do you feel that your upcoming course on urban history of Latin America or your FYS course works to continue to reveal unseen histories?
My course on the urban history of Latin America aims to show Butler students the urban realities of the region, from Central and South America to the Caribbean. To many people in the United States, Latin America is largely “unseen,” even though the region’s history and politics are deeply intertwined with those of the United States. There is also a persistent stereotype that Latin America is a rural region, when in fact it is heavily urbanized. In learning about the large-scale, innovative, and often contentious reality of Latin American cities, my hope is that new questions will emerge for students about the U.S. role in the region and some of the urban problems and opportunities that might exist right here in Indianapolis.
In Spring 2022, my FYS class, “Student Power,” will cover the global history of student activism from the 1960s to today. This course seeks to make seen the often forgotten ways in which students have fought for political and social rights, changed the course of history, and shaped modern universities. Beyond recovering student history with young people embarking on their time in college, the course also tries to make visible to students their own political agency. In the last few years, I think that young people in the United States have gained a greater sense of their potential power, as movements around issues such as gun control, racial justice, and climate change have grown. By looking at historical moments when students wielded even more power, we will recover how collective movements are built, destroyed, and reborn, and what happens when young people do nothing.