Citizen Nation

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?

As an upper-level seminar, the course 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 “SLOs” tab above.

This website serves as our online hub for the course, taught in Spring 2012 MW at 12:30 pm (Room Sullivan 104). From this site, you can download the syllabus or access it online, stay up to date with course news and any changes, see the guidelines for the course papers and projects, and follow links to my recommended history and writing resources on the web. The required books are listed under the “Readings” tab above.

This site is a blog, meaning it updates frequently and you should bookmark it or subscribe to it using an RSS feed reader (such as Google Reader). Please check it often or make sure that you subscribe to its updates to stay on top of our coursework.

If you have questions about the course before we meet in person on Wednesday, January 18th, please feel free to email me, at thangen (at) worcester.edu.

Thanks,
Tona Hangen, Asst Professor of US History