Course description

The extrajudicial murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor have brought renewed and overdue attention to the fatal designs of civic inequality. These designs—and the debates over the assignment, withholding, or deprivation of citizen status and civic protections from which they emerge—have a long and violent history. In this course we will attempt to map a history of citizenship as concept and institution from the ancient Mediterranean world to the 21st century. Some of the questions to be tackled include: who/what is a citizen? What are the prerogatives and rights that come with citizenship? Who is eligible to be—or become—a citizen? (How) are racial and gendered exclusions wired into the historical legacies and present-day practice of citizenship? How is citizenship imagined and narrated? What does it mean to be a global citizen? Although we will make much fuss over the ancient Mediterranean in the first half of the course, one objective of this course is to determine whether and to what degree such an orientation makes sense. To arrive at this determination, we will experiment with a range of different historical and conceptual genealogies for modern frameworks of citizenship. Our readings will run the gamut from poetry and narrative fiction to political theory and narrative nonfiction.

Course expectations and policy

For our Zoom lectures and precepts, we do not have policies on clothing: wear whatever you want, so long as you’re comfortable (but wear something). And while we would love to see your radiant facial expressions, we also understand if you need to turn your camera off for all or a portion of a Zoom. Please feel free to use a background filter; we are happy to supply themed ones. If, at any point, the course content or discussions make you so uncomfortable that you feel the need to turn off the camera and/or disconnect from the call, please touch base with us afterwards via email. If it’s concerning a subject that you would rather not address with us directly, please consider consulting with me.

Grading

Weekly journaling

We ask that, starting in Week 2, you initiate a conversation with someone not enrolled in the course (a member of your family or your community; a friend; a mentor) about one of the readings for that week; and that you then write a short paragraph about this conversation, not to exceed one page double-spaced, in which you summarize how you explained the reading to your conversational interlocutor and what their response to that summary was. The choice of conversational medium (face-to-face, phone, Zoom/Skype, email etc.) is entirely up to you and can vary from week to week. We’ll provide you with a link to a Google Drive folder for uploading your paragraphs, which you should aim to do no later than the end of day each Friday. Your instructors will check this folder three times to track your progress: at the end of Weeks 4, 8, and 12. With your permission (which we will solicit in advance), we may quote from your paragraphs in lecture and discussion. The end-of-term grade for this unit will be a holistic assessment of your paragraphs. You’re allowed to miss two weeks out of eleven (i.e. we will evaluate only nine of your paragraphs).

Take-home midterm

This open-book exam will be administered in two parts. Part A will consist of two argumentative essays that you’ll write in response to set prompts (we’ll give you four options). Our expectation is that you take two hours on Part A. Part B will consist of two creative essays: for the first, you’ll draw up a dialogue with one of the authors you’ve read up to that point in which you criticize their position on a specific aspect of citizenship (and they respond in turn to your criticisms); for the second, you will write in the style of another of the authors you’ve read, expanding and elaborating on one of their main points. Our expectation is that you take two hours on Part B as well. 

Take-home final

This open-book exam will consist of three parts: a reflection on your journaled conversations in which you take stock of directions taken and not taken; a design project in which you draw up a constitution for a new national government; and an argumentative essay that asks you to critique an author from the course’s first half from the position of an author in the course’s second half. Our expectation is that you take three hours on this exam.

Classroom culture and expectations

In order to build and maintain a collaborative and affirmative environment, we encourage you to practice care and generosity in your interventions; always to make space for others to participate equitably in the conversation; and to be on guard against those habits of discourse that militate against inclusion. Please hold us, your instructors, to that same standard as well.

Your ability to access the course material on your own terms and engage with it to the maximum extent possible is of paramount importance to us. We’re always happy to discuss your learning needs and how best to accommodate them.

Finally, we wish to draw attention to the presence in many of our readings of practices and language that are implicated in or actively embrace colonialism, slavery, and sex- and gender-based violence and discrimination. We will need to practice special care, for ourselves and each other, when subjecting this material to critical scrutiny.

Course texts

Euripides, Complete Tragedies III (Chicago)
Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (Penguin)
Aristotle, Politics (Hackett)
Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk (Norton)
Vitoria, Political Writings (Cambridge)
Rankine, Citizen