This course is a critically oriented survey of social movements as historical, political, and social formations that contest—and sometimes reproduce—power. We read classic and contemporary scholarship (from labor and peasant insurgencies to feminist, anti-racist, decolonial and climate mobilizations) through lenses of political economy, intersectionality, and contentious politics, attending to geographies from Turkey and the MENA to Europe and the Americas. Framed by “intense times”—authoritarian populism, polarization, austerity, war, digital disinformation, and ecological breakdown—the course asks how collective action emerges, organizes, and transforms institutions, and with what consequences. Students learn to connect theory to cases (e.g., Gezi, Arab Spring, 15M/Occupy, climate justice) and to evaluate both limits and emancipatory horizons of collective agency today.