Agency, Resistance & Cultural Production

Students will recall key historical resistance movements such as the Ghadar Party, significant organizations like the Sikh Coalition and SAALT, and influential cultural creators including Aziz Ansari, Hasan Minhaj, Riz Ahmed, and Mohsin Hamid. They will also remember terms like symbolic annihilation, mutual aid, and community-based participatory research.

Learners will explain how political organizing, community building, and cultural production serve as forms of resistance and agency. They will summarize the functions of institutions like gurdwaras and professional networks, and describe how contemporary movements address mental health, redefine masculinity, and pursue justice.

Students will apply historical frameworks to analyze current social movements, use community-mapping techniques to assess local institutions, and employ media literacy tools to critique representations of South Asian men in film, literature, and digital media.

Learners will analyze the strategies and impacts of resistance movements across different eras, deconstruct the role of cultural production in narrative control, and examine the intersectional dynamics (gender, class, caste, sexuality) within community institutions and organizing efforts.

Students will evaluate the effectiveness and ethics of different resistance strategies, assess the strengths and limitations of community institutions and cultural representations, and critique contemporary movements for their inclusivity, vision, and capacity to create systemic change.

Learners will design proposals for community-based interventions, create original cultural content (e.g., stories, scripts, media plans) that challenges stereotypes, and develop strategic visions for liberatory masculinities and healing-informed futures.