College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

Amanda Pullum

Originally from rural Appalachian Virginia, I am a first-generation college graduate and TRIO alum. When I was in high school, I took part in a movement to keep my school from being closed. We were unsuccessful, but while I was in college, my job at my school's Service-Learning Center took me to other communities where residents had fought--and failed in--similar efforts. This experience sparked my interest in studying grassroots social movements, and today I study how activists create strategies to win their demands, as well as how they collaborate with other social movement organizations. I have studied movements against rural school closures, pro and anti same-sex marriage movements, the 2009-2010 Tea Party movement, and the 2011 wave of K-12 teacher mobilization. Based on my research, I teach courses in social movements, labor unions, and gender. I am also trained in teaching writing, and I enjoy teaching both first-year writing and upper-division writing courses. I serve as faculty advisor and editor of Culture, Society, and Praxis, our undergraduate open access journal of social scientific writing.