Wednesday 4/25 – Research Lightning Round. Prepare a 2-minute presentation / mini-PechaKucha (instructions are under the “Research Project” tab above) about your research project. We may have distinguished guests; polish and practice MANY times before Wednesday. Your abstract is due, preferably in electronic form, so I can post it online easily.
Monday 4/30 – Occupy Citizenship. Reading: GC 287-314 and explore some of the links below, to look at either the #ows (Occupy Wall Street) movement which started last summer/fall, or mobilization and citizenship issues in the 2012 presidential election year. Your RP#4 is due – instructions are under the “Paper Prompts” tab above. Where do you get your political news? What mobilizes or empowers you politically as a citizen? http://occupywallst.org/ blog
Throughout this term, we have talked about many complex categories of people who live in the United States and call themselves Americans. Some are citizens; others are legal residents under various visa programs or somewhere along the legal pathway to citizenship; and some are not citizens and have entered the country illegally (either knowingly or unknowingly). Even the term we use to describe that last category can be complicated. “Illegals” is pejorative slang; “illegal alien” is confusing and dehumanizing. Both of these terms criminalize the person, rather than the act he or she may have committed. Most reputable organizations of journalists have called for using the term “undocumented immigrants” instead, others “unauthorized immigrants”; see here, here, hereand here for additional discussion of these loaded terms, who uses them, and what they mean in today’s contentious cultural and political contexts.
The reading for Wednesday looks at which Americans are still prevented from voting, whether because of citizenship status or because they have been convicted of crimes. Keyssar talks about both immigration and felon exclusion rules in RV pp. 246-257. Recently our campus hosted journalist and writer Jose Antonio Vargas, founder of DefineAmerican.com, who discovered when he was a teenager, to his surprise, that he had been brought to the country illegally under false papers. Read the essay where he “came out” as an undocumented person, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant,” published in the New York Times in June 2011. Although his is just one person’s story, it may stand for the experience of many whose legal status is fragile or whose pathway to citizenship is permanently blocked.
You also have due your “Massachusetts Aspects” document, where you’ve been noting whenever our two authors (Keyssar and Schudson) mention Massachusetts. The syllabus describes it as “an annotated list of the themes and events of this course related to the Massachusetts Constitution.” The length and format of this document is up to you, but hopefully it’s been a helpful tool throughout the semester to draw your attention to the local aspects of the larger story of citizenship we’ve been narrating. Also, I will hand out a study guide for the final exam on Wed 18th.
I revised the reading schedule til the end of the semester because of our missed class day. Some deadlines and reading assignments have been moved around, so toss the old Page 4 and use this one instead. If you were in class on Monday, April 2, then you got a paper copy of this new schedule. If not, download the new schedule as a PDF – it’s also linked in the left hand sidebar in case you need to reference it again.
The new reading for Wed 4/4 is GC p. 240-264 and RV p. 205-217
There is no class today (Wed 3/28). We will have our peer review session on Monday, 4/2 instead and I will make some adjustments to the reading schedule and post a revised syllabus later. Please review the paper guidelines carefully and make sure by April 2 to have at least 8 pages and your bibliography written plus a statement of what still remains undone or where you feel you’re having trouble. Use the critical thinking and information literacy rubrics to self-assess your research and paper-drafting process (they are attached to the guidelines).
I am happy to read anyone’s early draft, either virtually by email or in office hours on Thurs or Fri (assuming we are back to our regularly scheduled programming then).
The final version of the paper will be due on MONDAY, APRIL 9 instead of April 4th.
On Wednesday we’ll be talking about research papers, research strategy, and writing for the entire class time. There’s no assigned reading.
Some of you have asked me what to bring. Just bring what you have. It’s okay if it isn’t at full page length by this point, or if you haven’t got all your sources yet, or if you are only partway through writing/outlining. Bring whatever you have (preferably printed out, it’s easier for someone to read & mark it that way), just so you’ll have something to work with in pairs or small groups.
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 legally unnaturalizable. Please read the brief essay by David Goldstein-Shirley, and bring your laptops to class to use in group work.
We also have more soapboxes than usual, and I probably won’t let the class discussion on them go quite as long as on past Mondays, just in the interest of time, so soapbox speakers should plan for about 5 minutes including discussion.
Link: Tule Lake, courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle
As we focus in on the ultimately victorious struggle for universal women’s suffrage on in Wednesday’s class, keep in mind Linda Kerber’s notion of “braided citizenship” and consider how not only gender, but also race and class intersected with this story.
Reading: Keyssar, Ch. 6
Due in class: your paper topic. For the full guidelines, see the Research Project tab above.
Update 3/8/12: Happy International Women’s Day! After our discussion on Wednesday, I couldn’t resist posting this… thought you might enjoy. A little irreverent but a lot of fun (and see if you catch the Harry Burn reference near the end!)
Thanks to all who could attend the Naturalization Ceremony in Worcester today. I know we all found it very moving! I look forward to talking about it in Monday’s class – if you were able to go, you might jot down some notes and impressions while they’re fresh in your mind and bring them to class – or feel free to comment on this post if you have things you’d like to share about the experience.
Monday 3/5 Contested Meanings: The Long View
Reading: Linda Kerber, “The Meanings of Citizenship” (PDF). Kerber is one of the preeminent scholars on the history of how citizenship has changed and what it has meant in different eras, and the author of No Constitutional Right to be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship, among other books. As we’ve talked about citizenship and participation in democratic/political institutions up to about 1900, this article gives us an opportunity to stand back and reflect on how these different story threads (towards universal white male suffrage + granting of black male suffrage but its severe restriction by 1900 under state laws & customs + the glimmerings of a movement for women’s suffrage + the Native American catch 22) come together by the turn of the 20th century.
There’s a response paper due on Monday – you can base it on the Kerber reading and/or on the citizenship ceremony experience if you attended. Use this paper to demonstrate what you’ve learned in the course so far. Some questions you could consider:
What multiple “meanings” did you glean from the ceremony?
What did Kerber mean when she said citizenship’s meaning was “destabilized”? (She wrote the essay in 1997)
How did gender, race, and class inform the meaning of citizenship by 1900?
Why is the reality of the history of citizenship so different from the myth? How did that myth become so entrenched?
Kerber questions the need for citizenship. Is her skepticism justified? How was that need perceived or constructed by the end of the 19th century? What might people have made of her argument 100 years ago?
Wednesday 3/7 – Women’s Suffrage Reading: RV Ch 6; also your paper topic is due that day. Guidelines are posted under the “Research Project” tab above – if you need help in the process of framing a topic/question, please email or visit during office hours.
