Courses

Dr. John Dale on "The Promise of the Next System Studies"
Dr. John Dale on "The Promise of the Next System Studies"

Credit: Frehiwot Tefesse

Your course schedule as a Next System Fellow is fairly simple. You will meet in-person on Tuesdays on the Mason Square campus in Arlington, and in-person at the Fairfax campus and/or online on other days of the week (depending on which electives you've chosen).

  • Undergraduate students admitted as Next System Fellows enroll in three classroom courses and a six-credit internship course for a total of 15 credits.
  • Graduate students admitted as Next System Fellows enroll in the core Social Change and the Next System seminar and one three to six-credit internship course for a total of 6-9 credits.

Required courses for all Fellows include:

Social Change and the Next System - SOCI 401, GOVT 319 - This required course in Next System Studies seeks to explain the relationships between systemic crises, system design, systemic social movements, and system change. A rising global tide of community-based movements and initiatives offers the possibility that out of our current period may emerge a new system that is more democratic, sustainable, and just. Students engage directly with ongoing "next system" initiatives both around the world and in our region, meet with practitioners and policy experts, present and discuss readings and films in a seminar format, and collaborate with communities directly served and affected by George Mason University. This course provides an excellent preparation for careers in public policy and public service, social entrepreneurship, law, cooperative development, community and human services, education and research, labor organizing and worker rights, and social movement organizations and advocacy.

Internship Practicum - SOCI 416 or 616 or the equivalent in ANTH, INTS, GLOA, GOVT, GVIP, EVPP or another program - This is a required course for all students and involves independent scholarly research grounded in a student's internship or other supervised practice. Students enrolled in this course produce a term research project, maintain a research journal, and meet with their supervising instructor and other enrolled students in order to receive constructive feedback.

Elective courses (undergraduates must complete 2 of these) include:

Big Data, Technology and Society/Digital Democracy, Surveillance, and Platform Cooperativism - CDS 290, INTS 375, GLOA 398, GVPT, SOCI 391 - In this elective course, we explore the new technologies, social relations, and practices emerging in the course of the latest waves of the data revolution as contested terrains in a struggle between digital authoritarianization and digital democratization. In particular, we consider how this immediate struggle is shaping the conditions for the emergence of the next system. 

Power, Politics, and Society - GOVT 319, SOCI 340 - The power to maintain or to change our society shapes our lives. Where does that power come from, how does it function, and how can we exercise power? Gain a critical understanding of concepts of relational power, state formation, governance, elites and masses, social classes, the racial state, patriarchy, hegemony and resistance, revolutions, social movements, corporate power, nationalism and citizenship, transnational networks, global capitalism and the world system. This course is an elective,

Social Movements and Political Protest - SOCI 307, GOV 319, AFAM 390 - This elective course, offered in the Fall of 2025, provides students with a comprehensive curriculum on social movement research and theory, taught by a professor with decades of experience working to build and researching and writing about social movements. We introduce you to the kinds of questions posed and concepts applied by social movement scholars in their research, examining particular cases as we do so. We turn to three significant traditions in social movement theory - contention, identification, and praxis - and their implications for both academic research design and actual movements. Finally, we will together take up the challenge of organizing systemic movements in the "Decisive Decade" of the 2020s. 

Sociology of Human Rights - SOCI 394, CONF 399, INTS 375 - This is an elective course, offered in Fall of 2025. Understanding human rights requires conceptual analysis, moral judgment, and social scientific knowledge. Aside from providing a survey of sociological theory on human rights, this course examines connections between inequality, conflict, social justice, governance, and human rights under conditions of globalization and digital technological transformation, including relations and practices embedded in transnational social and political formations, information societies, and knowledge economies.

Cooperatives and Social Enterprise - GOVT 319, SOCI 395 - This elective course was offered in the Spring of 2025. Businesses and services are organized in all kinds of different ways. Many are run in an authoritarian way and designed to maximize profits and extract as much value as possible. Others are owned and managed democratically by the people who work there, by those most directly served by them, or in some cases, on behalf of society as a whole. This course provides a social scientific and historical introduction to cooperative and social enterprises, their possibilities and challenges, and the latest innovations in this sector.

These courses may also significantly help Next System Fellows advance toward completion of their major, minor, and some certificates or concentrations. For instance, the Internship Practicum course may fill the Capstone requirement. We encourage you to talk with your undergraduate advisor. 

Note that students who have already completed any of the listed courses can opt out of taking those again.