Empires, Subjects and Islands – Sept 25 & 27
by admin - September 26th, 2018
On Thursday and next Tuesday, we’ll look at a special category of American citizens: those who live in discontiguous US territories. The next two class sessions deal with colonized nations and territories within the jurisdiction of the United States. Their people have claim to American citizenship, although that claim has been at times historically contested, hard-won, or tenuous. We will explore these different experiences and histories and compare them to one another.
Thurs 9/27 – “Empires, Subject and Islands.” Reader Day 7 = Eric Love, “White is the Color of Empire.”
You also have a response paper due on Thursday, Sept 27. Write a 2-3 page paper that incorporates and engages course reading material to address ONE of these questions. (PS: these are the kinds of questions that will appear on the final exam, so you will want to save your notes and paper to study from).
You can choose a single text / document / chapter, or you can use multiple sources …
Option 1: What did citizenship look like, and what did it mean, around the time of the American Revolution?
Option 2: How “democratic” was the United States between 1750 and 1850 (and what evidence / measures can historians use to judge this)?
Option 3: What is your understanding of “citizenship” as it is defined in the Constitution (in other words: how useful a document is the Constitution for understanding American citizenship)?
Option 4: How did women, though denied the right to vote and subject to legal restrictions on their personhood, nonetheless express their identity as American citizens in the period between the Revolution and the Civil War?
Option 5: How did enslaved and free blacks of BOTH genders, though denied the right to vote and subject to legal restrictions on their personhood, nonetheless express their identity as American citizens before, during and/or after the Civil War?
Tues 10/2 Reflection Paper Due about your experience taking, studying for, and retaking the citizenship exam.
We will view the film The Insular Empire: America in the Mariana Islands during class. This 2010 PBS documentary traces the history of the Mariana Islands and its indigenous peoples as both American citizens and colonial subjects.
Film Notes Handout – the film will be placed on course reserve at the library, if you happened to miss class when it was shown.
Watch the trailer:
