Smith College's Moodle

COURSE OVERVIEW
The ideal of American citizenship has long laid claim to universal inclusivity and openness: citizenship, as both a legal status and a political-cultural identity, are supposedly accessible to all individuals within the polity. Based on a robust concept of freedom, and grounded in a fundamental notion of equal personhood, United States citizenship promised a form of political belonging free from the kind of status restrictions that defined citizenship in the aristocracies of 18th and 19th century Europe.

Yet the history of American citizenship is one marked by the exclusion, domination, and disenfranchisement of various groups defined as racially other, and thus outside the bounds of citizenship. How do we understand the coexistence of claims to equal democratic citizenship in the U.S. alongside the historical realities of enslavement, extermination, and other forms of racial violence? What does it mean to be an American citizen, and how as that meaning been shaped by the formation of race across space and time? Is citizenship a universal concept – open, in principle, to anyone? Or is it an exclusive concept – reserved for a select few? If racial injustice is not separable from citizenship, but somehow productive of it – that is, if racist structures shape how citizenship is interpreted and practiced – then can American citizenship be remade along more egalitarian lines?

This course will interrogate these questions, asking how race and citizenship have constituted each other over time. Through readings in political theory, American political development, history, and sociology, we will examine dimensions of American citizenship that emerge with, through, and against the creation of racial hierarchies: citizenship as a legal status, as a political-cultural identity, as civic responsibilities and cultural norms, and as a particular arrangement of institutional practices that define who is “inside” and “outside” the political community. Though this course focuses on the political theory of citizenship and not a historical survey, texts will engage with indigenous sovereignty, colonial America, slavery and the antebellum period, Jim Crow, and immigration through the 19th and 20th centuries. While much of the course is devoted to exploring the historical production of “Black” and “white” as categories of political belonging, we will also consider how notions of race and citizenship have shifted and developed through the experiences of First Nations and immigrant groups.

Throughout our discussions, we will also examine how dominated and oppressed racial groups have mobilized by both adopting and challenging prevailing notions of what it means to be a citizen. At the end of the course, we will end by considering how American citizenship might be refashioned in order to promote and sustain equal freedom and racial justice.

Course Description and Goals

 

“The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.” (bell hooks in Teaching to Transgress, 1994, p. 207)

Drawing from bell hook’s inspiring quote above, this course introduces you to the vibrant field of Sociology of Gender and Globalization and its unique interdisciplinary perspectives, borrowing insights from Sociology; Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies; Anthropology; Economics, Politics and so on. This 200-level course moves beyond geographical and disciplinary boundaries, to engage with the key dimensions of global restructuring and globalization through the lens of gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, and North-South relations. We will study how various modes of oppression and inequalities intersect in global manufacturing, supply chains, and in the transnational politics of representation and access in global media, religion, culture, war, and dissenting spaces. Questions that we will interrogate throughout the semester include: What is globalization and how and why is it a contested concept? Is globalization a new process? How can globalization be understood as a social, cultural, political, and ecological process and not just as a technological-economic process? How are structures of identity and oppression i.e., gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nation, religion, ability, and other forms of difference, interwoven with globalization? How do biological, cultural, historical, and political frameworks shape knowledge and processes of globalization? In exploring these questions, the course incorporates sources ranging from social science research, creative non-fiction, films/documentaries, art, media, and popular culture. Topics may include transnational feminisms, gendered labor and the global economy, feminist and queer theory, reproductive politics and globalization, carceral politics, rights-based advocacy, visual cultures.

This course will accomplish its goals by:

1. Engaging students in pluralistic perspective-taking and awareness of the relationship among society, self, and others
2. Providing opportunities to develop and practice the skills of critical thinking, reasoning, communication, and integration of knowledge and perspectives, including:

●        Communicating persuasively and effectively in public speaking and writing

●        Working collaboratively and creating safe and kind spaces for each other to teach and learn in

3. Students will be expected to be self-reflective and draw from their own identities and global social issues affecting their young adult lives, using theoretical concepts and language from the course. Please remember, using personal experiences to understand academic concepts is valid and important – as the famous feminist saying goes - The Personal is Political! We should strive to use these as examples to illustrate or raise questions about readings and course debates rather than substituting anecdotes for critical thinking.

READINGS

You do not need to purchase any readings/books for this course.  All reading materials will be on the course’s Moodle website and all videos will be linked on the syllabus.  You would be able to access the videos required for the course for free through YouTube or the Smith Kanopy service (https://www.kanopy.com/en/smith/). The course schedule below lists the readings/videos we will cover each class day during the semester.