If your not worried about being absolutely "current," a notion which loses its meaning quickly outside of the constant jiggling illusion of change that has surely been drummed into your student's brains by the media, I would suggest starting with the anti-master himself. Kropotkin wrote a wonderful britannica article about anarchism, as well as many short pamphlets, short enough for a homework assignment, and interesting enough, in the way that they simply do not acknowledge the simplistic oppositions between the "mass" and the "individual" or "freedom" as supposedly opposed to "collectivism" which dominate nearly everyone's way of thinking right now, regardless of class, education, etc. The way he talks about the simplest, most basic human issues has a way of making frustrated and confused people slap themselves and say, "That's what I've been trying to think, and they won't let me!" It is the best possible place to start, I think. It also presents a very much slighted perspective on the very current issue that students will encounter if they move higher up in academia, the "debate," or, " ' "as it were" ' " pile of static, opposed, equally reactionary assumptions about whether human nature and identity is innate or constructed. to Kropotkin, we are innately collective, both radically individual, and incapable of being so without the support of the communities we live in. Nearly a century before anyone talked about "socio-biology," and proceeded immediately to present it in the most reactionary possible terms, Kropotkin was demonstrating that a biological approach to human social behavior in no sense has to be reactionary, and can in fact form the basis of the only truly liberationist philosophy. We don't necessarily have to agree with that completely, but it is important for students entering academia to be familiar with the possibilities of such a perspective, so that they won't pursue meaningless careers as departmental drudges, cranking out "analyses" based on the same old stale, already stated, and utterly uninteresting strings of assumptions. I would also include primary works from Emma Goldman, and perhaps Malatesta's "At the Cafe," which explains the basic principles of syndicalism in For Dummies terms, in the delightfully trite context of a luncheon conversation. If you wan to be more up to date, Bookchin is an obvious source, or for articles that are more properly enless-regress-of-footnotes style academic, there is the journal Anarchist Studies. Its good to know someone is even mentioning this subject to their students
