Citizen Nation

All women were omitted from many of the privileges of American citizenship, and some of them strenuously and articulately resisted. In addition, millions of women suffered under the double burden of being both female *and* enslaved. Even free white women used “slavery” as a way to talk about their legal predicament, and to advocate not only for abolition but for gender equality. We will read three examples of nineteenth-century women’s writings on citizenship and legal rights, plus a short overview from a women’s history textbook. Continue reading →

What was American democracy like in the first half of the 19th century? Would it be recognizable to us as “democracy”? What was happening with voting rights in this era (and why)? Continue reading →

On Tuesday 9/16 our class will focus on the Constitution, and on the “Constitutional moment,” i.e. the era and cultural milieu in which it was framed. Your reading is Chapter 2 of Schudson’s Good Citizen and also the full text of the US Constitution. You’ll want to bring both of these items to class. The Constitution can be found in the back of any US history textbook you have on hand, or you can print a copy from the web, or download it as a mobile app onto your phone.

Tuesday’s soapbox speakers are Tommy, Stephen, and Tony C.

For Thurs 9/11, we move from a generic, conceptual definition of citizenship to (in Bellamy’s terms) a more empirical examination of actual citizenship in the American colonies and early republic. Who could be a citizen? Who was deemed capable of consenting? Who represented whom and how? Continue reading →

Links for today:

Scottish independence… the 16-year-olds can vote

MacLean’s article (29 July 2014)
BBC News video

For our next class on TUESDAY 9/9: read Richard Bellamy, Citizenship: A Very Short Introduction and write a 2-3 page response paper considering some of these critical thinking questions; bring the book and your paper and be prepared to discuss them in class. Continue reading →

We will not meet at all this week due to the holiday on Monday and the water main break on Tuesday.

So: keep working on your research papers, as best you can. They are still due on Monday the 19th, which will be a film day viewing portions of the documentary Eyes on the Prize. If you need an extension or cannot make that deadline due to the campus disruption please communicate with me about your options and plans. I will be on campus and available for meetings about your papers on Thursday 11/15 and Friday 11/16, so contact me if you’d like to make an appointment.

Thanks! See you next Monday 11/19.

Thanks to everyone who brought rough drafts and gave their time as peer reviewers – I think that helped all who participated in the paper conferences on Nov 7th.

Here’s what’s coming up –

Mon 11/12 – no class (Veteran’s Day)

Wed 11/14 – Rights Revolution. Reading: GC 240-264 + RP 205-217
Consider – what were the specific goals and strategies of the different sides in the civil rights movement? What was accomplished in the 1950s and 1960s? What was not accomplished? WHO accomplished it, and how? I.e. who should (and who usually does) get the credit for the civil rights movement’s achievements? How does this movement connect to broader policy and history trends regarding citizenship, including immigration and naturalization which we have just finished discussing?

David Chappell puts it this way in his book Stone of Hope (which I’m reading with a different class this month): “The movement created disorder so severe as to force a reluctant federal government to intervene–on the side of black southerners, which was more surprising then than it seems in hindsight today. The movement did all this with remarkably few casualties. The peculiar racial institution of the twentieth century South was destroyed by means considerably short of a civil war. That makes its destruction in many ways a more rather than less impressive achievement than the destruction of slavery.”

Monday 11/19 – We Shall Overcome (film clips, mostly). No reading, Research Paper is due as a printed stapled paper in class.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving break!

Monday’s class has light reading but will be a hands-on workshop with some sources and materials for understanding the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. That internment included both born-citizens and immigrants who were (as we have discussed) legally unnaturalizable. Please read the brief essay by David Goldstein-Shirley, and bring your laptops to class to use in group work.

Reading: “Enemies in their Own Land,” by David Goldstein-Shirley (PDF)

There will be several soapboxes also, and of course keep an eye on the election news!

Link: What’s left at the Tule Lake camp, courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle

Two examples for today – Wong Kim Ark & Bhagat Singh Thind