Citizen Nation

Mon 2/20: No Class

Wed 2/22: Democracy in Practice II. Reading: GC Chapter 4. Due in class: Citizenship Exam Reflection paper. Download the guidelines here (Word doc).

Mon 2/27: The Disenfranchised. Reading: Jeannette Wolfley, “Jim Crow, Indian Style” (PDF) and RV Chapter 5

Wed 2/29: We attend Worcester’s Naturalization Ceremony. It is at noon in Mechanics Hall, but we need to be there at least by 11 am. Please arrange to be free to go that day if AT ALL possible; I am happy to send a note of explanation to a professor if there’s a conflict (but of course I cannot require you to attend). We will not have a class that day, the ceremony takes the place of class.

Joey mentioned he’d caught part of this radio program, and I thought I’d post it for everyone. The author of our textbook The Right to Vote, Harvard professor Alex Keyssar, appeared on the WBUR NPR radio program “Radio Boston” on 2/13/12 to talk about voting rights. Specifically, he argues that we are currently in a period of contraction of the voting right, which could matter for the outcome of the 2012 election, and he also published an op-ed piece this week in the New York Times that explores these ideas, called “The Strange Career of Voter Suppression.”

Listen to the Radio Boston interview here

Monday 2/13, we have one soapbox presenter, and we’ll be talking about slavery, the Constitution, and citizenship up to the 1870s. Reading is GC 133-143, and RV Ch 3.

Wednesday 2/15 – in class, we’ll retake the US citizenship exam, and in our next class period on Wednesday 2/22 (no class on Monday 2/20) you’ll have a short paper due reflecting on the experience of taking this exam twice – so, depending on the time, you might begin on that in class also. Would you pass as a citizen? Do you think these are the right questions to ask? What else do you think naturalized citizens should know? Would you advocate for a test like this to be a qualification for voting even for naturally-born citizens?

To study for the citizenship exam, I’ll put the citizenship toolkit on course reserve at the library, or you can head for the US-CIS’s online resources, download a free smartphone app, or use this PDF Study Guide, which I got from the History Channel site where we took the online version on Day 1. Just remember who the current Speaker of the House is!

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 →

Last week we explored the growth of democracy and the expansion of suffrage in antebellum America. This week, the underside of that growth. Who was excluded from the definition of citizenship? Who couldn’t enjoy the fruits of that ripening young democracy? How fair and how widely dispersed was the power to govern in early 19th century America? Whom did the “rule of law” protect and whom did it exploit?

Monday 2/6 – Exceptions to the Rule of Law. Reading is GC Ch 3 from page 110-133 + RV Ch 3

Wednesday 2/8 – Women and Citizenship. Reading is the 1848 “Declaration of Sentiments” (online at the Rutgers Stanton/Anthony Papers Project) and a PDF packet of additional readings that will be posted by Tuesday.

For Wednesday, 2/1 please read GC Ch 3, up to page 110, and RV Ch 2. The questions we’re interested in for class discussion are:

In what ways was “democracy ascendant” (to use Keyssar’s phrase) in the early republic?

Why, according to Schudson, was there a genuine revolution in 1800 (and why hadn’t it been part of the American Revolution in the 1770s and 1780s)?

Do Keyssar and Schudson agree in their interpretation of the degree of democracy in American society in the early 19th century? If not, where do they disagree?

What kinds of historical sources do these two authors draw upon to make their arguments about the growth of democratic institutions in this era?

Link to “Political Parties in the US 1820-1860” graphic PDF (8.5×14″)

On Monday 1/30 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. I’m teaching a Constitutional History course in the night school, and we’ve discovered that Pocket Constitution is pretty good, as is Multieducator’s Constitution + Federalist Papers (ps, for more law and government-related mobile apps, see here).

Monday’s soapbox speakers are Tim Bickford, Joey Teevens and Chuck Trainer.

Also: I noticed a typo on the pretty version of the syllabus (which I hope would be obvious once you sat down to do the reading) – Wed’s reading out of Good Citizen should say Chapter 3 up to p. 110 (not p. 10).

For Wed 1/25, 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 →

For our next class: 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 be prepared to discuss it in class. Continue reading →

This course is a seminar on the history and meaning of American citizenship, organized around several guiding questions: Who counts as an American? How do we decide as a society? What does it mean to be an American citizen? What rights, privilege, and responsibilities are part of that definition? In the founding generation, citizenship was limited to property-owning white men, and since that time, struggles to expand American citizenship have been at the core of the American story. How did the specifics of that struggle unfold over the course of American history? Continue reading →