Citizen Nation

Course update: I’ve added two new sections in Blackboard – an archive of the response paper prompts, and a list of calendar events outside of class which can be used for extra credit.

For Tues 9/27: When the Constitution was first established and ratified, slaves were counted as less than full persons for purposes of representation in our government, and enjoyed none of the legal privileges or rights of citizenship. To be precise, each was 3/5 of a person. This “compromise,” as it is often called (and is that a good word for it, really??), was created (of course) without the consent or input of enslaved people, as a way to balance power and apportionment between slave/free and large/small states at the time of the Constitutional convention.

So: when, and how, and why, did blacks first become free and then become counted as full people under the Constitution? Our discussion on Tuesday 9/27 will focus on Good Citizen, Ch. 3 and Right to Vote, Ch 4. Please take careful notes and/or bring the books to class. Also, please study for your re-take of the U.S. Citizenship Exam which we will do in class.

Due in class: A 2-3 page double-spaced, printed response paper based on the prompt distributed in Thursday’s class. If you attended the Profiled film on Thursday or the conference on Civic Engagement in Higher Ed on Friday for extra credit, your write-up paper is also due.

Discussion Questions:

What were strategies (political, religious and otherwise) used to challenge the legality and morality of slavery? How successful were those strategies? How did they compare with early strategies for women’s suffrage?

Was granting the vote to black freedmen in the South during Reconstruction part of the general trend toward widening of the franchise, or an exception to it?

What did the 14th Amendment accomplish? What did it NOT accomplish?

Why is the story of the passage of the 15th Amendment a “strange odyssey”?

How were the experiences of white women and black men connected during Reconstruction? Where did this leave black women?

Describe the “redemption” of the South. In what sense was it redeemed?

After being enfranchised, how were African-Americans then (legally and otherwise) disenfranchised?

Given this history, what is the meaning of legal “personhood” in 19th century America, and how is that different from citizenship?

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.

Reminder: Soapbox presenters are listed under the Soapbox tab above

Reading for Thurs 9/22:
1) Start with this 4-page PDF packet. Page 1 is a brief overview of the legal status of women in early America. Pages 2-4 are an excerpt of an 1843 essay by the Massachusetts editor of the Transcendentalist journal, The Dial, Margaret Fuller, titled “The Great Lawsuit.”

2) Online, read an 1837 letter from abolitionist Sarah Grimke, responding to a “women should keep to their place” letter drafted by New England clergy, who called the Grimke sisters “unnatural” and umwomanly for their public speeches.

3) And then, read the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments, drafted at the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York. As it follows the form (and function?) of the Declaration of Independence, it called attention to the neglect of women in the nation’s legal and Constitutional framework. It’s bold for its time, but note how it is framed as a declaration of sentiments, i.e. feelings and emotions, the “natural” province of 19th century women. Clever strategy!

Prepare for discussion with these questions:

Compare two or more of these readings to each other. What are areas of potential agreement or disagreement?

What basis of authority do these writers claim for women’s rights? How broadly would they like those rights extended?

What demands, if any, are they making? Would these seem reasonable to their audiences, given what you know about the values and concerns of emerging American democracy? For whom are they speaking? All women? Just some women? Which women?

What in these documents was new or surprising to you? What context does it connect to for you? What did you already know about life for antebellum American women?

Other resources: “Women and the Law” primary source collection from Harvard Baker Business Library

Image: 1859 drawing of a fictional women’s rights convention, showing angry men in the gallery denouncing the proceedings (Harpers Weekly, source: Library of Congress)

Discussion questions for Tues 9/20: 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)?

Harvard professor Alexander Keyssar takes on these questions in Chapters 2 and 3 of The Right to Vote. Please read carefully and bring the book with you, ready to discuss.

EXTRA CREDIT Opportunity this week: Attend a screening of the film Profiled on Thurs, Sept 22 at 1:00 pm in North/South Auditorium in the Student Center. I will grant extra credit for anyone who attends and writes up a review of the film and how it connects to our course topics – due by Tuesday, Sept 27.

For list of Thursday soapbox presenters, check the Soapbox tab, above.

Film clip from Tuesday:

On Thursday 9/15 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, if possible. 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.

Discussion Questions:

Are voting rights natural or granted?
Should citizenship be linked to the right to vote?
Why the electoral college system?
Where / how often does the Constitution mention the words “citizen” or “citizenship”?

Thursday’s soapbox speakers are Dean and Kristen

Reminders:
1) please complete the citizenship exam & send screenshot by Friday 9/9 — see post below for details
2) email Dr. Hangen if you are willing to give a soapbox speech on Thurs 9/15 — I need 6 brave volunteers — see Soapbox tab above — I’ll explain more about this in Tuesday’s class and pass around a signup sheet

For Tues 9/13 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 actually represented whom and how?

The reading is Chapter 1 in both our two textbooks, Alexander Keyssar’s The Right to Vote and Michael Schudson’s The Good Citizen. If you don’t yet have the books, those chapters are available as PDF files in Blackboard. You will immediately notice that while they cover similar time periods, each has a quite different focus. Keyssar is concerned primarily with the narrower right to vote within the umbrella of citizenship exclusions and requirements, while Schudson is less interested in how the boundaries of citizenship were drawn and more interested in political practices broadly defined, and on what constitutes “good” citizenship in the past.

Discussion Questions:
What myths did these readings “bust” for you?
Who was eligible to vote in colonial America (where, and under what circumstances)? Specifically– why and how was suffrage limited before the 1780s?
Where might historians disagree (i.e. where are the fracture lines in these two scholarly arguments)?
How “democratic” was colonial politics?

If you’re able, bring the books to class, or take good notes and bring your notes.

For Sept 6 in class:

Leno’s Citizenship Test (pre-2009)

Myths about migration to US (On The Media, July 2016)

Somalis in Maine (August 2016)

The Electoral College (New York Times, 2012)

How Much do Americans Know About Immigration? (Washington Post, Sept 2016)

Links & resources to explore before Thurs Sept 8 class:

Take the 100-question US Citizenship Quiz – do this before Thursday, WITHOUT looking up answers & email me a screenshot of your results = thangen@worcester.edu

Voter Registration
Find Your US Senator / Representative
Find your MA Senator / Representative
Voter ID Laws, State by State
Massachusetts Redistricting Info
FAQs about the Electoral College
National Popular Vote Campaign

Reminder: Sept 8, a 2-3 page response paper is due on the Bellamy Citizenship book. Bring the paper to class as a printed paper (staples and everything!), don’t email it to me. We will discuss the entire book in class, please read it using the discussion questions I handed out as a guide, and bring the book to class ready for a lively discussion.

This is the course website for “Citizen Nation” at Worcester State University in Fall 2016, which can be taken as either History (HI) or Political Science (PO), as well as for Honors credit. Our class meets Tues / Thurs at 8:30 am in Sullivan 326. I used this website when I taught the course in previous terms and I’ve left that course material up as an archive for those students; you can ignore any post not tagged “Fall16.”

This course is a rigorous 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?

As an upper-level seminar and a LASC “super-course”, this class presumes some prior historical knowledge and will ask you to dig deeply, read extensively, and write often; it is designed to be challenging even for experienced students. For the complete list of what you’ll be expected to know and do by the end of the course, see the “About” tab above.

For incoming students, get the list of 3 required books under the “Readings” tab above, and read the “Peer to Peer Advice” tab to get a sense of what to expect from–and what to put into–this semester’s work. Please note we will use the Bellamy Citizenship book in the FIRST WEEK of class, so get it in advance. Previous semester’s student research abstracts are posted in the “Student Showcase” if you’d like to get a sense of the quality and scope of work produced in prior semesters. If you need to contact me over the summer, you can track me down with the information posted under “Prof Info.” I look forward to meeting you in September!