HIST 625: Civil Rights and Citizenship

HIST 625-001: Civil Rights and Citizenship
(Spring 2027)

07:20 PM to 10:00 PM T

Krug Hall 209

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Section Information for Spring 2027

In this course, we will examine the history of civil rights and citizenship in modern America. Civil rights history is often most closely associated with the African American struggle for racial equality. Nevertheless, the fight for civil rights in the United States has never been simply a struggle about the needs of one racial group. Citizenship is a broad, and sometimes slippery, term or concept. Historians often study citizenship in ways that are quite different from the ways in which historical people experience it. For this reason, this class will engage both with the ways in which people in the past understood it and the ways in which historians have analyzed the concept. 
 
Throughout this semester, we explore how many different minority groups in American have fought for their rights in a democratic society that tends to favor the majority. We will study a wide range of issues including women's rights, immigration, Native American rights, disability rights, LBGTQ rights, poor people’s movements, and prison rights. By examining and comparing different social and political movements as well as larger theoretical questions about what defines civil rights, we will develop a deeper understanding of the nature of citizenship--both its rights and obligations--in American society. What does it mean to be a citizen of the United States? Who decides who is considered a citizen and who is not? The overall goals of the course will be: 1) to develop a historic understanding of how minority groups build social and political movements to advance their needs in modern American society and 2) to understand how America's sense of nationhood is inextricably connected to contested ideas of citizenship. 

Course Information from the University Catalog