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A Look at #FergusonSyllabus

Ed Summers – Jan 19, 2015

As a new semester is about to begin academics are busily putting finishing touches on their course syllabi. Here at the University of Maryland there has been sustained interest over the past few months in integrating discussion and thinking about the recent events in Ferguson, and subsequent #BlackLivesMatter movement into our classes. Look for news about planned teach-ins and events like ours in the coming weeks.

If you are interested in finding Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter resources to use in your coursework one place to look is the #FergusonSyllabus hashtag on Twitter. Marcia Chatelain, a history professor at Georgetown University and a University of Missouri–Columbia alumna, started this hashtag with this tweet back in August of 2014:

https://twitter.com/DrMChatelain/status/501042404196376576

You can listen to an interview with Chatelain from Saint-Louis Public Radio soon conducted just a few days after this tweet. Since then there have been over 8,000 tweets with the #FergusonSyllabus hashtag. Chatelain wrote a post about her favorite suggested resources, and you can find other lists, such as this Google Doc from Daniel Krutka, a Professor of Education at Texas Woman’s University.

Here at MITH we have a collection of these tweets between August 17th 2014 and January 7th, 2015. We have done some rudimentary analysis that we thought we would share here. If you have ideas for things to do with this collection please let us know.

Timeline of Activity

Ferguson Syllabus Chart

Top 25 Most Mentioned Web Resources

Web PageMentions
Rhetoric Race and Religion: #FergusonFiasco: The Killing of #MichaelBrown: A Reader271
Rhetoric Race and Religion: #FergusonSyllabus: The #FergusonFiasco and Teaching African American Theology226
Rhetoric Race and Religion: #FergusonFiasco: Doing Theology After #Ferguson-Part 1127
Prison Culture » #FergusonSyllabus: Talking and Teaching About Police Violence112
Ferguson and college education: Sociology and history professors teach the #fergusonsyllabus.59
[TTT Studio and ChatEdTechTalk](http://edtechtalk.com/ttt)
Teaching #FergusonResources - Google Docs50
How to Teach Kids About What’s Happening in Ferguson - The Atlantic47
#FergusonSyllabus (with images, tweets) · neelofer · Storify46
Rhetoric Race and Religion: #FergusonFiasco: The Killing of #MichaelBrown: A Reader39
[Teaching the #FergusonSyllabusDissent Magazine](http://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/teaching-ferguson-syllabus)
Ferguson Syllabus « Sociologists for Justice30
[How the #FergusonSyllabus Can Help Teachers Talk About Race and Rights in SchoolAlternet](http://www.alternet.org/education/how-fergusonsyllabus-can-help-teachers-talk-about-race-and-rights-school)
The Ferguson Syllabus27
Rhetoric Race and Religion: Why Holder Did Not Have to Come, or Why We March and Protest25
Teaching About Ferguson: Do’s and Don’ts - The Root25
24
[Teaching About FergusonTeaching for Change](http://www.teachingforchange.org/teaching-about-ferguson)
Race—Not Just a Hot Topic - Race Matters in the Classroom21
Ferguson and college education: Sociology and history professors teach the #fergusonsyllabus.20
Whiteness And Anxiety In The Diverse Classroom - Race Matters in the Classroom20
How the #FergusonSyllabus Can Help Teachers Talk About Race and Rights on the First Day of School by Liz Pleasant — YES! Magazine19
How the #FergusonSyllabus Can Help Teachers Talk About Race and Rights on the First Day of School19
How to Teach Kids About What’s Happening in Ferguson - Atlantic Mobile18
bending arc toward justice18
[How to talk to students about FergusonPBS NewsHour](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/talk-students-ferguson/)

Top 5 Most Active #FergusonSyllabus Users

R3365
Dr. Marcia Chatelain332
Andre E. Johnson211
Wabash Center209
Rhetorical Theology203
fahri sakarya174
Jay159
ColorsOfAlgebra87
FocusASconnect70
Julie Tilsen60

Top 5 Most Retweeted

https://twitter.com/jaymills/status/502286437727756288

https://twitter.com/DrMChatelain/status/501485731198803969

https://twitter.com/DNLee5/status/501940040499740672

http://web.archive.org/web/20151223213745/https://twitter.com/prisonculture/status/506048675684958209

https://twitter.com/NEAToday/status/537086325338701824

If you would like to analyze the data yourself we have made tweet ids, as well as a CSV presentation of the data available for you to use on GitHub.