Dr. Sarah McGaughey, Dickinson, German
Sustainability and/of Anti-Nuclear Movements and the International Green Party
The anti-nuclear movements in Germany since the 1970s were the reason I attended Valley & Ridge. My course “What is Feminismus?” taught in Spring 2024 introduced students to a variety of social movements involving women and women’s rights in Germany, including the rise of anti-nuclear protests and the founding of the international Green party. The course poses two questions: What are the major German social movements and events since the 1950s that addressed women’s rights or were connected to the political mobilization of women? What was the long-term impact of these movements? While my course included materials that addressed political and social change in Germany, I wanted to use the work of the Valley & Ridge workshop to add a component about the sustainability of social movements over time as well as better understand the social response to nuclear power in the US.
Attending the Valley & Ridge workshop provided me with a multitude of tools and ideas to work with my students in new ways. New classroom discussion structures and ideas for classroom involvement will improve the variety of ways in which my students can interact with one another and the course materials. The presentation of a variety of theoretical frameworks of sustainability, such as the sustainable development goals, will also enrich my teaching of how a social movement has long-term impact. Presentations by former workshop participants were, however, the most impactful for me and have led to me thinking about how to transform a course that would seemingly be located a continent away in Europe into a course that can use place-based learning and ideas to better understand the similarities and differences between US and German popular and political responses to nuclear power.
For now and thanks to the immediate impact of the Valley & Ridge workshop, I created a framework for students to study the sustainability of the movements currently covered in the GRMN 250 course, but I also hope to work on a course unit or new course that takes advantage of the regional history of nuclear power with place-based learning tools of visiting sites, using archives, and even meeting with community members.