For those of you that can still afford college there will be at Columbia University an anthropology course specifically directed at the Occupation. Grad students and juniors/seniors only, but it is a start to recognizing the depth of this social movement.
This course will open the door for a more thorough examination of the how's and why's of this Movement as well as educating some of the more insulated students about the realities facing their fellow Americans. This will also allow the spread of knowledge throughout academia as these students continue their academic journeys and in some cases become TA's.
Personally I think that sociology would also be a good perspective to study the Occupy Movement from but I have a bias based on my own limited education.
Sorry this links to the NY Post I apologize in advance for the unprofessional writing therein:
Does getting pepper-sprayed count as extra credit?
Columbia University is offering a new course on Occupy Wall Street next semester — sending upperclassmen and grad students into the field for full course credit.
The class is taught by Dr. Hannah Appel (right), who boasts about her nights camped out in Zuccotti Park.
As many as 30 students will be expected to get involved in ongoing OWS projects outside the classroom, the syllabus says.
The class will be in the anthropology department and called “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement.” It will be divided between seminars at the Morningside Heights campus and fieldwork.
ANTH V3897y Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement 4 pts. Hannah Appel. Occupy the Field is a field-based course about Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement more broadly. The course offers training in ethnographi research methods alongside a critical exploration of the conjunctural issues in the Occupy movement: Wall Street, finance capital, and inequality; political strategies, property and public space, and the question of anarchy; and genealogies of the contemporary moment in global social movements. Class time will be divided between fieldwork in an around the Occupy movement, and seminar at Columbia. In other words, this class will meet off-campus several times, and students will be expected to be involved in ongoing OWS projects, to be discussed in class. While the syllabus draws extensively on ethnographic and anthropological work, it is also broadly interdisciplinary, incorporating texts and approaches from sociology, political theory, economics, history, and primary source material from OWS and beyond. The class will also incorporate guest lecturers from Columbia and the wider intellectual and activist community. Dissenting voices of all kinds are encouraged in this class, and one need not have a particular orientation toward OWS to participate. REGISTRATION BY INSTRUCTOR'S PERMISSION ONLY