DEFIANT! American Protest Movements in the 21st Century

Climate change, teachers’ strikes, gun violence, and more – all on the heels of #MeToo, Standing Rock, #BlackLivesMatter, and Occupy Wall Street... Historian Dawson Barrett connects these protest waves, examines how we got here, and considers where we may be headed.

Barrett argues that protest is an American tradition and that "the world around us is a legacy of struggles won and lost and routinely fought again."

Barrett's The Defiant (New York University Press, 2018) has been described as “an important book for our times,” an “inspirational call to action,” and “an indispensable manual for…the rebels and resisters, the dissidents and the disobedient.”

Dr. Dawson Barrett is Associate Professor of US History at Del Mar College and the author of Teenage Rebels: Successful High School Activists from the Little Rock Nine to the Class of Tomorrow and The Defiant: Protest Movements in Post-Liberal America. His writings have appeared in a variety of academic and popular publications, including Teen Vogue.