Laurie B. Green

This seminar offers students with some knowledge of the history of civil rights movements in the U.S. the opportunity to more deeply explore African American and Mexican American struggles for justice and liberation from the 1950s to 1970s. Its comparative approach encourages insights into movements that had distinct historical roots and yet, in many places, did not occur in isolation from each other. In Austin, for example, African American and Mexican American civil rights organizations filed suit against school segregation on the same day. From this vantage point, we consider the relationship between racial justice and such themes as gender and sexuality, education and media, antiwar and antipoverty movements, power and liberation. Students have opportunities to explore such issues in the context of Austin and/or Texas.

Writing Component and Projects
This writing component for this course will be fulfilled through reading responses, short essays, and the final project, a public digital presentation on some component of civil rights movements on the UT campus and/or in the Austin community. A central goal is to help students learn how to articulate their own historical arguments based on their research, and to present them to others. Presentations will bring written historical analysis together with selected historical documents, photos, oral histories, radio clips, and/or film segments. We will have the opportunity to collaborate with another civil rights class.

Activities
Class sessions include discussion seminars; workshops on research, writing, and digital presentation; and guest presentations by activists from the Austin community and individuals who will present information for the projects. Course materials combine scholarly texts (book chapters and articles by historians) with historical documents, oral histories, and films. Near the end of the semester, there will be a final public event at which students will present their projects.


Possible Books (in addition to other readings):
Goldstone, Dwonna. Integrating the 40 Acres
Oropeza, Lorena. ¡Raza Si! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam War Era
Montejano, David. Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981  
Orleck, Annelise and Lisa Hazirjian, eds. The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964-1980
Theoharis, Jeanne. A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History


Evaluation
Reading responses (8 total, submission grade)    15%
Review                        10%
Oral History Essay                15%
Final Project    – Short submissions and drafts    10%
– Writing components        20%
        – Digital Project as a whole    20%
        – Presentation              5%
Reflections                     5%
Attendance (points subtracted if over 3 unexcused absences)

Whether they used a language of equality, justice, freedom or liberation, an array of social groups in 20th-century America forged struggles and organizations that advocated for recognition of their rights, and yet there was never unanimity about the meaning of rights. This course explores changing and clashing ideas of rights that propelled social movements in different historical periods of working-class people, women, Blacks, Latina/os, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and students, paying close attention to perceptions of race, gender, labor, national identity, sexuality, and place. To better understand these struggles and contested meanings of rights, we also draw on comparative and relational approaches to this history. That is, we strive not only to identify similarities and differences among these groups, but to develop insights into how they influenced each other. Such an approach can lead to surprises; in Austin, for example, African American and Mexican American attorneys filed suit for school desegregation on the same day, with both arguing that the city had violated their rights guaranteed by Brown v. Board of Education.

The last unit of the course turns to such struggles over rights at the University of Texas during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly those involving racial justice. Students will have the opportunity to study documents from UT in time period and to listen to interviews with participants.  

Classes will be taught synchronously. The central texts are memoirs and original historical documents. A goal of this course is for students to gain a sense of how historians approach their work, thus class activities include analyzing such narratives and documents and, in lieu of traditional exams, writing short essays and creating digital presentations based on their own historical arguments. Classes include short lectures, discussions, breakout group discussions, and one or more guest lectures.


Possible readings
Historical documents
Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don’t Cry:  A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High
Carlos Bulosan, American is in the Heart: A Personal History
Charles Denby, Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal
Wilma Mankiller, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People
Cherrie Moraga, Native Country of the Heart
Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

Requirements
3 short essays based on class readings and lectures (15% each) 45%
3 historical documents analyses (10% each) 30%
Digital project 20%
Class Participation (discussion boards, breakout groups, class discussion) 5%

A half century removed from the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, many participants and observers of intersecting social justice movements today—whether about racial violence, women’s empowerment, immigrant rights, medical inequality, labor conditions, or climate change—and are looking back to that history for clues about today. Historians have much to contribute, not by looking for one-to-one connections in which “history repeats itself” or prognosticating about the future, but by critically analyzing roots of today’s challenges in the specific historical context of that time period. This capstone course offers students the opportunity to be the historians by undertaking original research projects about those turbulent decades. Projects focus on campus and community social justice movements in Austin itself, most of which have received scant scholarly discussion despite their significance to larger historical narratives about racial justice, women’s liberation, Vietnam, labor and poverty, and popular and political culture.

Course activities:

We begin with readings on the central themes of the course. Students then conduct research and write a substantial essay (15-25 pages) on one of these themes based on critical evaluation of primary and secondary sources. They learn to develop original research questions and arguments situated in relation to scholarship in the field. Due to Covid-19, students won’t visit archives in person, but will participated in virtual workshops with archivists and have access to digitized materials including documents, newspapers, broadcasts, visual arts, and oral histories. In this capstone, students have the opportunity to conduct an oral history that will ultimately become part of the Austin Women Activists Oral History Collection. Because of the public value of this research to the community, the semester culminates with short digital projects that will be presented in a special class session with visitors and may be accessible afterwards online.

Possible Texts

Acuña, Rodolfo. The Making of Chicana/o Studies: In the Trenches of Academe

Cohen, Robert, et al., Rebellion in Black and White: Southern Student Activism in the 1960s.  

Goldstone, Dwonna. Integrating the 40 Acres: The 50-Year Struggle for Racial Equality at UT

Kendi, Ibram X. The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 9^th Ed.

Requirements

15%     Participation during class and on discussion boards, including discussion questions.

15%     Oral history and creation of metadata

20%     Assignments toward full draft of final paper including revisions based on feedback

30%     Final essay

15%     Digital presentation of project, combined with oral commentary

5%       Course reflections

Description

This upper division writing intensive seminar offers students who already have some familiarity with the history of civil rights movements in the U.S. the opportunity to more deeply explore themes in African American and Mexican American struggles for justice in the mid-20th century, some of which are still relevant today. Using a comparative approach makes it possible to develop unique insights that are unlikely in courses focused solely on one of these movements. It encourages new questions about places like Texas, where these struggles had distinct roots and yet did not take place in isolation from each other. In Austin, for example, attorneys for African American and Mexican American organizations filed suit against school segregation on the same day. We also explore how cultural understandings of race, national identity, gender and class impacted these movements.

The University of Texas’s own history forms the basis for the main writing projects. Using historical documents, newspapers, and oral histories, students write historical essays and blogs about themes such as desegregation, Black and Chicano studies, and student activism. A central goal is to help students learn to articulate strong original arguments based on their own research.

Activities

This course includes both classroom discussion seminars and research workshops in campus archives. In the first weeks, students complete assigned readings and reading responses, visit archives, and take part in an activity about the 1950 Sweatt v. Painter Supreme Court decision, about desegregation of UT Law School. In the remaining weeks, class members conduct research individually or in teams, and complete writing projects based on this research and class readings. There is no final exam, but the last of these papers is due during finals week, by the date the exam would have been scheduled.

Readings:

Will include articles and sections of books. Possible books include:

Biondi, Martha. The Black Revolution on Campus

Goldstone, Dwonna. Integrating the 40 Acres: The 50-Year Struggle for Racial Equality at the University of Texas

Oropeza, Lorena. ¡Raza Si! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam War Era

Montejano, David. Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981   

Theoharis, Jeanne. A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

Evaluation

Attendance, preparation, participation

350-word reading responses (3 total, submission grade)

Sweatt v. Painter project (completion of information forms)

7-page essays or blogs, (3 total)

Description

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. This course is also intended to encourage students to consider questions about the writing of this history: How have civil rights scholars approached this history? What are their central arguments and how do we assess them? What has received the most attention, and what has received almost no attention? What kinds of sources have they used, and what are the benefits and/or drawbacks of these choices?

Possible texts

Jones, William P. The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Sellers, Cleveland. River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant & the Life & Death of SNCC    

Strum, Philippa. Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Rights

Takaki, Ronald. Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Theoharis, Jeanne. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

Evaluation

Attendance

Short Assignments, submission grade (3)

In-class unit exams (3)

Graded Group Projects (3)

Books

Boyd, Nan Alamilla, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965

Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media

Meyerowitz, Joanne, ed. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960

Orleck, Annelise, Rethinking American Women’s Activism (Routledge). Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography

Dreyer, Thorne, Alice Embree, and Richard Croxdale. Celebrating the Rag: Austin’s Iconic Underground Newspaper

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?  


Possible texts-
Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :
Mankiller, Wilma. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People.
Garcia, Mario T. Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice
Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents
Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC          
Strum, Philippa. Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Civil Rights.
Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)
Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)
Five-page essay  (25%)
Regular class attendance (5%)

This writing intensive seminar allows students already familiar with the history of the civil rights movements of the mid-twentieth century to more deeply explore themes that can be addressed only briefly in a large course. We concentrate primarily on African American and Mexican American struggles for civil rights, but also address the Asian American and Native American movements. Using a comparative approach allows for unique insights into the complex histories of places like Texas, California, and elsewhere. Students consider the distinctiveness of each movement while also viewing them in relation to each other. We also explore how historical understandings of race, national origin, gender and class impacted these movements. This comparative perspective encourages new understandings of mid-twentieth century U.S., more broadly speaking.

In the first part of the class, students concentrate on readings, discussions, and brief assignments. Students then deepen their understandings of the civil rights era by researching and writing a 5,000 word research paper about a specific struggle at the University of Texas or Austin. These original research papers are based on archival collections at the University of Texas, newspapers, and published scholarly works. Students work closely with the professor to identify topics and sources. As a class, we also work on improving students’ writing skills, and the project is broken down into a series of shorter assignments leading to the final draft. Most of this history has received next to no historical attention, so this research has significance beyond the classroom. At the end of the course, students thus present papers in a conference-like format.

Readings (Please note: these are possible texts, the final syllabus will include fewer texts.):
Biondi, Martha. The Black Revolution on Campus

Goldstone, Dwonna. Integrating the 40 Acres: The 50-Year Struggle for Racial Equality at the University of Texas

Green, Laurie. Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle

Maeda, Daryl J. Chains of Babylon: The Rise of Asian America
Oropeza, Lorena. ¡Raza Si! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam War Era

Phillips, Kimberley L. War! What is it Good For? Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (8^th edition) NOTE: Be sure you purchase the correct edition.

Grading:
10% Participation (completion of readings, participation in class discussion)

15% Archives activity
60% Research paper. This is a cumulative grade based on a series of assignments from the initial planning stages to final submission of the papers.

15% Presentation
There is an attendance policy; unexcused absences over a certain number result in point deductions from the final grade.

This upper-division history lecture course examines women’s participation in both well-known and lesser-known social movements during the twentieth century, more deeply than is possible in a U.S. history survey course. Throughout, we explore women’s activism in movements that specifically targeted women’s rights, such as the woman suffrage movement. However, we also consider women’s participation in movements that do not outwardly appear to be movements about women’s rights, such as the Civil Rights Movement. 

In addition to exploring the scope and contours of women’s activism, the course will emphasize on four key themes: 1) how cultural understandings of gender may have shaped these movements; 2) tensions between ideas of women’s rights that emphasized equality of the sexes and those that emphasized difference; 3) the question of whether you can write a universal history of women or need to write separate histories along lines such as race, class, region, religion, sexual preference, and more; 4) power relations not only between men and women but among women. 

COURSE MATERIALS

SHORT READINGS will be available on Canvas. 
POSSIBLE BOOKS:
Crow Dog, Mary. Lakota Woman.

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. 1968.
Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965.
Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

OTHER COURSE MATERIALS: Films, photographs, original historical documents

EVALUATION

Short assignments                                                               10% total      

Unit quizzes (3)                                                                     10% total

Unit in-class essay exams (3)                                            60% total

Take Home Final                                                                  20%

Extra credit   1-2 points added to final grade

Attendance: Unexcused absences beyond those allowed result in a point deduction from final grade.

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?  


Possible texts-
Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :
Mankiller, Wilma. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People.
Garcia, Mario T. Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice
Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents
Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC          
Strum, Philippa. Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Civil Rights.
Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)
Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)
Five-page essay  (25%)
Regular class attendance (5%)

This historiography seminar is designed for history graduate students with a U.S. concentration who have not yet taken their comprehensive exams, especially those in their first or second year of study at the University of Texas. It serves as both an introduction and a basis for preparing for oral exams. The course provides the intellectual space for students to read, analyze and discuss together key historical literature and issues on the decades between Reconstruction and the Reagan era. Most of our courses in the U.S. area focus on a specific subject, time period or theme, such as slavery, the post-World War II era, or environmental history. This class is organized chronologically, but also explores a larger set of themes and research methodologies, such as urban, environmental, medical and southern history; political, immigration, religious and diplomatic history; or the histories of gender, race, national identity and cultural memory. The reading for each class pairs older, well-respected literature with recent, cutting-edge scholarship. Over the course of the semester we will have guest visits from scholars on our faculty who are experts in fields under examination and will discuss their recent publications or work-in-progress. The oral presentations and written assignments for the course offer opportunities to more deeply analyze the continuities and discontinuities among different generations of historical scholarship.

Possible Readings

Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Belknap, 2002)

Brinkley, Alan. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (Vintage, 1996)

Bsumek, Erika. Indian-Made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1868-1940 (University of Kansas Press, 2008)

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic Books, 1995)

Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Vintage, 2003)

Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (W. W. Norton, 1992)

Deutsch, Sarah. Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940 (Oxford, 2000)

Green, Laurie B. Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle (University of North Carolina Press, 2007)

Hedstrom, Matthew S. The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Hsu, Madeline. The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (Princeton University Press, 2015).

Lafeber, Walter. The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, Vol. 2 (1994)

McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton University Press, 2002)

Montejano, David. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (University of Texas Press, 1987)

Wailoo, Keith. Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (University of North Carolina Press, 2001)

Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow (Oxford University Press, 1963)
Requirements

Requirements

Class participation, including attendance, preparation for, and involvement in all weekly discussions (with exceptions for medical or family emergencies). (15%)
Oral presentation and leading discussion on recommended readings for one class session. (15%)
Review essay of 4-6 pages on the required and suggested readings for the week during which student leads discussion. (

Description

This course explores the history of social movements for rights in twentieth-century America. Whether they used a language of equality, justice, freedom or liberation, an array of social groups in modern America forged struggles and organizations that advocated for recognition of their rights. And yet there was no unanimity about the meaning of rights; the course examines changing and often conflicting interpretations, focusing on Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, women, working-class people, and gay men and lesbians. Instead of isolating them from each other, we use both comparative and relational approaches to the history of these movements. We strive not only to make sense of similarities and differences, but how they influenced each other. It what ways, for instance, did the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s inspire the Women’s Liberation Movement? Such an approach can lead to surprises; in Austin, for example, African American and Mexican American attorneys filed suit for school desegregation on the same day. A goal is for students to get a sense of how historians approach their work, thus readings include original historical documents and memoirs in addition to scholarly analyzes. This is primarily a lecture course, but some classes are devoted to group projects.

Requirements:

4 unit exams of equal weight (15% each)                                                     60%

4 short quizzes on lecture terms (5% each)                                                  20%

3 historical documents analyses (5% each)                                                   15%

Participation (pertaining to contributions to class projects)                           5%

Extra credit opportunities are available.

Attendance is required. Two points will be deducted from final grade for each unexcused absence over the allowed 3 unexcused absences.

READINGS:

Selected historical documents and articles will be posted on CANVAS.

Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don’t Cry:  A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High

Carlos Bulosan, American is in the Heart: A Personal History

Sal Castro and Mario T. García, Blowout: Sal Castro & the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice

Charles Denby, Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal

            NOTE: Use 1989 edition. The bookstore is producing copies for students.

Wilma Mankiller, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People

Books (Shorter readings will be posted on CANVAS.)

Boyd, Nan Alamilla, Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965

Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media

Meyerowitz, Joanne, ed. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960

Orleck, Annelise, Rethinking American Women’s Activism (Routledge). Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography

Dreyer, Thorne, Alice Embree, and Richard Croxdale. Celebrating the Rag: Austin’s Iconic Underground Newspaper

This upper-division history course examines women’s participation in both well-known and lesser-known social movements during the twentieth century, more deeply than is possible in a U.S. history survey course. Throughout, we explore women’s activism in movements that specifically targeted women’s rights, such as the woman suffrage movement. However, we also consider women’s participation in movements that do not outwardly appear to be movements about women’s rights, such as the Civil Rights Movement.

In addition to exploring the scope and contours of women’s activism, the course will place particular emphasis on four key themes: 1) how cultural understandings of gender may have shaped these movements, 2) tensions between ideas of women’s rights that emphasized equality of the sexes and those that emphasized difference; 3) the question of whether you can write a universal history of women or need to write separate histories along lines such as race, class, region and/or sexual preference; 4) power relations not only between men and women but among women.

SHORT READINGS will be available on Canvas.

BOOKS:

Crow Dog, Mary. Lakota Woman.  Reprint edition, Grove Press, 2011.

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. 1968; reprint edition, Delta, 2004.

Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965. University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Ruth Rosen. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America. Revised edition. Penguin, 2006.

Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Women’s Suffrage Movement. NewSage Press, 1995.

Attendance                                                   5%

On-time submission of assignments                    5%

5 Lecture/Reading quizzes                                   4% each (20% total)

5 In-class essays                                         10% each (50% total)

Final exam                                                    20%

This writing intensive seminar allows students who already have some familiarity with the history of the civil rights movements of the mid-twentieth century to more deeply explore themes that can be addressed only briefly in a broader lecture course. Readings and class discussions will concentrate primarily on African American and Mexican American struggles for civil rights, but also address the Asian American and Native American movements. Likewise, we compare rural and urban movements, and northern and southern ones. Using a comparative approach will allow unique insights that are usually missing in courses on the Civil Rights Movement. In this rethinking, students will consider the distinctiveness of each of these struggles while also viewing them in relation to each other, which participants frequently did at the time. In doing so, we explore how historical understandings of race, gender and class impacted these movements in distinct and shared ways. Just as importantly, this comparative perspective encourages students to gain new understandings of mid-twentieth century U.S..

This course has a substantial writing component. Students will deepen their understandings of the civil rights era by researching and writing a 5,000 word research paper using archival collections at the University of Texas or elsewhere in Austin. Papers also rely on published scholarly works and other published sources such as newspapers. Students I work closely with students to identify topics and sources. The project is broken down into a series of shorter assignments that will bring you to your final paper. At the end of the course you will have the opportunity to present your paper in a conference-like format. This presentation will not be graded, but will allow you to share your work with other students, not just me!

Texts:

Maeda, Daryl J. Chains of Babylon: The Rise of Asian America.

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi.

Nelson, Alondra. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination.

Orleck, Annelise and Lisa Gayle Hazirjian, eds. The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964-1980.

Grading:

25%     Attendance and class participation, to be broken down as follows:

15%     participation (attendance, completion of readings, participation in class discussion)

75%     Research project. This is a cumulative grade based on a series of assignments that take the student from the initial planning stages to the final submission of their papers.

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?

Possible Texts:

Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents, by Waldo Martin

Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II, by Ronald Takaki

Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, by Wilma Mankiller

Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare, by James H. Cone

Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Civil Rights, by Philippa Strum

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, by Jeanne Theoharis

The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC, by Cleveland Sellers

Grading:

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)

Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)

Five-page essay  (25%)

Regular class attendance (5%)

This upper-division history course examines women’s participation in both well-known and lesser-known social movements during the twentieth century, more deeply than is possible in a U.S. history survey course. Throughout, we explore women’s activism in movements that specifically targeted women’s rights, such as the woman suffrage movement. However, we also consider women’s participation in movements that do not outwardly appear to be movements about women’s rights, such as the Civil Rights Movement.

In addition to exploring the scope and contours of women’s activism, the course will place particular emphasis on four key themes: 1) how cultural understandings of gender may have shaped these movements, 2) tensions between ideas of women’s rights that emphasized equality of the sexes and those that emphasized difference; 3) the question of whether you can write a universal history of women or need to write separate histories along lines such as race, class, region and/or sexual preference; 4) power relations not only between men and women but among women.

Course Evaluation

Attendance                                                                                  5%

On-time submission of assignments                          5%

5 Lecture/Reading quizzes                                               4% each (20% total)

5 In-class essays                                                                     10% each (50% total)

Final exam                                                                                    20%

Possible Required Readings

SHORT READINGS will be available on Canvas.

BOOKS:

Crow Dog, Mary. Lakota Woman.  Reprint edition, Grove Press, 2011.

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. 1968; reprint edition, Delta, 2004.

Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965. University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Ruth Rosen. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America. Revised edition. Penguin, 2006.

Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Women’s Suffrage Movement. NewSage Press, 1995.

This historiography seminar is designed for history graduate students with a U.S. concentration who have not yet taken their comprehensive exams, especially those in their first or second year of study at the University of Texas. It serves as both an introduction and a basis for preparing for oral exams. The course provides the intellectual space for students to read, analyze and discuss together key historical literature and issues on the decades between Reconstruction and the Reagan era. Most of our courses in the U.S. area focus on a specific subject, time period or theme, such as slavery, the post-World War II era, or environmental history. This class is organized chronologically, but also explores a larger set of themes and research methodologies, such as urban, environmental, medical and southern history; political, immigration, religious and diplomatic history; or the histories of gender, race, national identity and cultural memory. The reading for each class pairs older, well-respected literature with recent, cutting-edge scholarship. Over the course of the semester we will have guest visits from scholars on our faculty who are experts in fields under examination and will discuss their recent publications or work-in-progress. The oral presentations and written assignments for the course offer opportunities to more deeply analyze the continuities and discontinuities among different generations of historical scholarship.

Requirements

• Class participation, including attendance, preparation for, and involvement in all weekly discussions (with exceptions for medical or family emergencies). (15%)
• Oral presentation and leading discussion on recommended readings for one class session. (15%)
• Review essay of 4-6 pages on the required and suggested readings for the week during which student leads discussion. (20%)
• Final 15-17 page historiographical essay on theme of student’s choosing. (50%)

Possible Readings

Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Belknap, 2002)

Brinkley, Alan. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (Vintage, 1996)

Bsumek, Erika. Indian-Made: Navajo Culture in the Marketplace, 1868-1940 (University of Kansas Press, 2008)

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic Books, 1995)

Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Vintage, 2003)

Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (W. W. Norton, 1992)

Deutsch, Sarah. Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940 (Oxford, 2000)

Green, Laurie B. Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle (University of North Carolina Press, 2007)

Hedstrom, Matthew S. The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Hsu, Madeline. The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (Princeton University Press, 2015).

Lafeber, Walter. The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, Vol. 2 (1994)

McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton University Press, 2002)

Montejano, David. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (University of Texas Press, 1987)

Wailoo, Keith. Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (University of North Carolina Press, 2001)

Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow (Oxford University Press, 1963)

This course intensively examines U.S. women's history between World War II and the 1970s. In doing so, it also explores popular perceptions of womanhood, manhood and sexuality that became central to the cultural politics and social conflicts of the postwar period. By weaving together these topics – women’s history, popular culture, and postwar social movements – we raise fresh questions about well-known episodes of U.S. history. Why, for example, do most Americans remember Rosa Parks only as a demure seamstress who initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott because she was too tired to give up her seat to a white? If every young woman hoped to be like Donna Reed or June Cleaver in the fifties, then where did the sixties movements come from? We also explore how various groups (e.g., suburban girls, working-class women, civil rights activists, immigrants, and others) negotiated ideas of family, work and sexuality. In doing so, we examine roots of issues that continue to have political purchase today, such as reproductive rights, sexuality, job equity, welfare, race, and ethnicity.

Course Activities:This is primarily a discussion seminar, but class will occasionally include short lectures and films. Readings include historical documents, memoirs, scholarly articles and full-length historical studies. The course has a writing flag, and is designed to help you develop skills in historical writing and analysis. Students will write regularly to encourage critical thinking and class discussion of readings. Graded assignments include weekly reading summaries, a short media research paper based on popular magazines of the postwar era; and a “Postwar Women’s Memoir Project” based on interviews with women who came of age between World War II and the 1970s.

Texts:

* Bailey, Beth. Sex in the Heartland

* Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media 

* Gilmore, Stephanie, ed. Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States

* Grace, Nancy M. and Ronna C. Johnson, eds., Breaking the Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers

* Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

* Meyerowitz, Joanne, ed. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (noted as NJC on syllabus)

* Santiago, Esmeralda. Almost a Woman

* Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography

Grading:

10% Attendance, promptness, class participation

30% 350-word weekly analyses of readings (6 essays, 5% each)

20% Media research essay, 5 pages 

35% Final Postwar Women’s Memoir Project essay, 8-10 pages

5%  Group Presentation on Memoir Projects

FLAGS:   CD  |  EL

This writing intensive seminar allows students who already have some familiarity with the history of the civil rights movements of the mid-twentieth century to more deeply explore themes that can be addressed only briefly in a broader lecture course. Readings and class discussions will concentrate primarily on African American and Mexican American struggles for civil rights, but also address the Asian American and Native American movements. Likewise, we compare rural and urban movements, and northern and southern ones. Using a comparative approach will allow unique insights that are usually missing in courses on the Civil Rights Movement. In this rethinking, students will consider the distinctiveness of each of these struggles while also viewing them in relation to each other, which participants frequently did at the time. In doing so, we explore how historical understandings of race, gender and class impacted these movements in distinct and shared ways. Just as importantly, this comparative perspective encourages students to gain new understandings of mid-twentieth century U.S..

This course has a substantial writing component. Students will deepen their understandings of the civil rights era by researching and writing a 5,000 word research paper using archival collections at the University of Texas or elsewhere in Austin. Papers also rely on published scholarly works and other published sources such as newspapers. Students I work closely with students to identify topics and sources. The project is broken down into a series of shorter assignments that will bring you to your final paper. At the end of the course you will have the opportunity to present your paper in a conference-like format. This presentation will not be graded, but will allow you to share your work with other students, not just me!

Texts:

Maeda, Daryl J. Chains of Babylon: The Rise of Asian America.

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi.

Nelson, Alondra. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination.

Orleck, Annelise and Lisa Gayle Hazirjian, eds. The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964-1980.

Oropeza, Lorena. ¡Raza Si! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam War Era.

Phillips, Kimberley L. War! What is it Good For? Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq.

Grading:

25%     Attendance and class participation, to be broken down as follows:

15%     participation (attendance, completion of readings, participation in class discussion)

75%     Research project. This is a cumulative grade based on a series of assignments that take the student from the initial planning stages to the final submission of their papers.

10%     15-minute oral presentation on research project

This upper-division history course examines women’s participation in well-known and lesser-known social movements during the twentieth century, more deeply than is possible in a U.S. history survey course. Throughout, we explore women’s activism in movements that specifically targeted women’s rights, such as the woman suffrage movement. However, we also consider women’s participation in movements that do not outwardly appear to be movements about women’s rights, such as the Civil Rights Movement.

In addition to exploring the scope and contours of women’s activism, the course will place particular emphasis on four key themes: 1) how cultural understandings of gender may have shaped these movements, 2) tensions between ideas of women’s rights that emphasized equality of the sexes and those that emphasized difference; 3) the question of whether you can write a universal history of women or need to write separate histories along lines such as race, class, region and/or sexual preference; 4) power relations not only between men and women but among women.

Texts:

SHORT READINGS will be available on Canvas.

BOOKS:

Crow Dog, Mary. Lakota Woman.  Reprint edition, Grove Press, 2011.

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. 1968; reprint edition, Delta, 2004.

Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965. University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Ruth Rosen. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America. Revised edition. Penguin, 2006.

Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Women’s Suffrage Movement. NewSage Press, 1995.

Grading:

Attendance                                                      5%

On-time submission of assignments               5%

5 Lecture/Reading quizzes                              4% each (20% total)

5 In-class essays                                             10% each (50% total)

Final exam                                                       20%

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?

Possible texts-

Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :

Mankiller, Wilma. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. 

Garcia, Mario T. Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC           

Strum, Philippa. Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Civil Rights. 

Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Grading:

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)

Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)

Five-page essay  (25%)

Regular class attendance (5%)

Problems of race, gender, and national identity continue to preoccupy Americans, both inside and outside of the academy. These subjects and their interrelatedness have become central to much historical inquiry among U.S. scholars, particularly in the last twenty-five years. Such work has profoundly influenced the ways in which many historians approach their research. This graduate research seminar offers students the opportunity to critically discuss major works in the recent historiography of gender, race and national identity in the 20th-century U.S., and to write a research paper on a related topic of their own choosing, preferably based on one of the archival repositories at the University of Texas at Austin. The course will pay particular attention to methodologies by which historians have approached these complex subjects. Our discussion of methodologies will address three core questions: 1) How did these ideas shape and, in turn, were shaped by historical social, economic, cultural and political developments? In other words, in what ways were they historical? 2) How did ideas about gender, race and national identity influence each other. Why, for example, has race frequently been elaborated in gendered terms of manhood and womanhood? Why have understandings of national identity and citizenship been so frequently bound up with ideas of race and gender, and with what consequences? 3) What methodologies have best allowed historians to grapple with the complexity of these ideas and their interrelations? Why does one element or another (e.g., gender), frequently drop out in the actual analysis? Conversely, why do some well-intentioned historians wind up with a “gender chapter” (i.e., a chapter on women), rather than showing its integrality to the entire project?

Course Structure

During the first part of the course we will assess various methodological approaches. We begin with a set of theoretical pieces, and then examine significant monographs that address gender, race and national identity in the context of specific thematic problems. In the early weeks of the course, students also develop ideas for research projects, identify sources, and write a brief proposal. We will visit research libraries on campus. During the middle part of the course, we suspend class meetings while students work independently and attend office hours with the professor. In the final three classes, we reconvene for students to read and comment on each others' drafts.

Texts:

Arredondo, Gabriela. Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity, and Nation, 1916-1939 (2008)

Baldwin, Davarian L. Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity: The Great Migration, & Black Urban Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Greene, Julie. The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.

Holt, Thomas. The Problem of Race in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Lui, Mary Ting Yi.  The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 

Ngai, Mae. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Reverby, Susan. Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and its Legacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Grading:

1) Regular class attendance, completion of readings, and thoughtful participation in class discussion, including submission of 1-3 questions on reading for that week. These questions/comments will be due by 11 a.m. on the class meeting day.  (20%)

2) Presentation of 15-20 minutes on 1-3 archival documents you are using in your project (10%)

3) Proposal and bibliography (10%)

4) Penultimate draft of research essay, due the Monday before class for discussion either Week 13, 14, or Week 15

6) Final essay, 20-25 pages, due Thursday, May 13, 4:00 p.m., at my office, GAR 2.116. Grade for final paper includes assessment of revisions from original draft. (60%)

This course intensively examines U.S. women's history between World War II and the 1970s. In doing so, it also explores popular perceptions of womanhood, manhood and sexuality that became central to the cultural politics and social conflicts of the postwar period. By weaving together these topics – women’s history, popular culture, and postwar social movements – we raise fresh questions about well-known episodes of U.S. history. Why, for example, do most Americans remember Rosa Parks only as a demure seamstress who initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott because she was too tired to give up her seat to a white? If every young woman hoped to be like Donna Reed or June Cleaver in the fifties, then where did the sixties movements come from? We also explore how various groups (e.g., suburban girls, working-class women, civil rights activists, immigrants, and others) negotiated ideas of family, work and sexuality. In doing so, we examine roots of issues that continue to have political purchase today, such as reproductive rights, sexuality, job equity, welfare, race, and ethnicity.

Course Activities:This is primarily a discussion seminar, but class will occasionally include short lectures and films. Readings include historical documents, memoirs, scholarly articles and full-length historical studies. The course has a writing flag, and is designed to help you develop skills in historical writing and analysis. Students will write regularly to encourage critical thinking and class discussion of readings. Graded assignments include weekly reading summaries, a short media research paper based on popular magazines of the postwar era; and a “Postwar Women’s Memoir Project” based on interviews with women who came of age between World War II and the 1970s.

Texts:

* Bailey, Beth. Sex in the Heartland

* Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media 

* Gilmore, Stephanie, ed. Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States

* Grace, Nancy M. and Ronna C. Johnson, eds., Breaking the Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers

* Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

* Meyerowitz, Joanne, ed. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (noted as NJC on syllabus)

* Santiago, Esmeralda. Almost a Woman

* Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography

Grading:

10% Attendance, promptness, class participation

30% 350-word weekly analyses of readings (6 essays, 5% each)

20% Media research essay, 5 pages 

35% Final Postwar Women’s Memoir Project essay, 8-10 pages

5%  Group Presentation on Memoir Projects

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?  

Texts:

Possible texts-

Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :

Mankiller, Wilma. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. 

Garcia, Mario T. Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC           

Strum, Philippa. Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Civil Rights. 

Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Grading:

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)

Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)

Five-page essay  (25%)

Regular class attendance (5%)

This upper-division lecture course examines women’s participation in well-known and lesser-known social movements during the twentieth century, more deeply than is possible in a U.S. history survey course. Throughout, we explore women’s activism in movements they initiated, such as the woman suffrage movement, the women’s movement in the black Baptist Church, the birth control movement, Mexican American women’s unionization, the women’s liberation movement, and the conservative women’s movement. However, we also consider women’s participation in movements initially organized by men, such as union movements in which they formed ladies’ auxiliaries, or jointly by men and women, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, or the Chicano movement. In addition to exploring the scope and contours of women’s activism, a central concern will be the significance of historical understandings of gender in these movements. In what ways did the forms of women’s activism reflect contemporary understandings of womanhood? In what ways did women’s participation reshape these cultural perceptions?

This is primarily a lecture course, but we will regularly hold short discussions and conduct work in small groups. Both during and outside of class, we will work with copies of original historical documents made available through Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000, an online resource. We will also screen and analyze short films and film clips. Weekly readings will include a range of materials, from original historical documents and autobiographies to scholarly essays and longer studies.

This graduate research seminar introduces students to innovative, contemporary approaches to the history of cities and metropolitan areas. Urban history has undergone important transformations in the past two decades, as scholars reconceptualize the city as a locus of change by analyzing the contested historical meanings of urban space. Although the course will examine studies from earlier periods, such as Horace Cayton and St. Clair Drake’s famous 1945 study of black Chicago, we will largely focus on more recent historiography. Most readings will concentrate on the U.S.; however, we will also read shorter studies of urban areas outside the U.S. We consider such themes as the racialization and gendering of urban space, migration, the built environment, popular culture and the urban imaginary, disease and medicine, the relationship between city and region, environmental history, and political and economic development.

The seminar also provides the opportunity for students to produce original research papers that draw on these methodologies. Students will be encouraged to – but not required to -- make use of materials at one of UT’s archives; to this end we will visit or discuss research libraries on campus. In addition to submitting final papers, students will also present their work at the end of the course in panel discussions aimed at encouraging larger thematic dialogues.

Course Structure

During the first half of the course we will assess various approaches to urban history through the reading of monographs that focus on specific cities and metropolitan areas. Each student will be responsible for the presentation of a supplementary reading two times during the semester. In the early weeks of the course, students develop ideas for research projects, identify sources, and write a brief proposal. During the third quarter of the course, we suspend class meetings while students work independently and attend office hours. In the final classes, we reconvene for students to present drafts in a conference panel format.

[NOTE: This course is taught from a historical perspective; however, students working in other disciplines are welcome to bring their perspectives into class discussion. Likewise, although most students will work on a U.S. topic, this is not required.]

Course Requirements

1) Regular attendance, completion of readings, and thoughtful class discussion (10%)

2) Presentations in two class meetings on a recommended reading (10% each or 20% total)

3) Proposal and preliminary bibliography (included in final grade for essay)

4) Penultimate draft of research essay (evaluation will be included in final grade for essay)

5) Final essay, 25-30 pages (60%)

6) Class presentation of research findings as part of panel (10%)

Possible readings

Blair, Cynthia M. “I’ve Got to Make My Livin’: Black Women’s Sex Work in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago

Brooks, Charlotte, Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay World

Fernandez, Lilia. Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago

Klingle, Matthew. Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle

Nicolaides, Becky M. My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965

Roberts Jr., Samuel. Infectious Fear: Politics, Disease, and the Health Effects of Segregation

Self, Robert. American Babylon: Race and Struggle for Postwar Oakland.

This writing intensive seminar allows students who already have some familiarity with the history of the civil rights movements of the mid-twentieth century to more deeply explore themes that can be addressed only briefly in a broader lecture course. Readings and class discussions will concentrate primarily on African American and Mexican American struggles for civil rights, but also address the Asian American and Native American movements. Likewise, we compare rural and urban movements, and northern and southern ones. Using a comparative approach will allow unique insights that are usually missing in courses on the Civil Rights Movement. In this rethinking, students will consider the distinctiveness of each of these struggles while also viewing them in relation to each other, which participants frequently did at the time. In doing so, we explore how historical understandings of race, gender and class impacted these movements in distinct and shared ways. Just as importantly, this comparative perspective encourages students to gain new understandings of mid-twentieth century U.S. history as a whole.

This course has a substantial writing component. Over the course of the semester, students will deepen their understandings of the civil rights era by researching and writing a 5,000 word research paper using archival collections at the University of Texas or the Austin History Center. Papers also rely on published scholarly works and other sources such as newspapers. I work closely with students to help with this process.

Meets with AMS 370, MAS 374, AFR 374D

Course Evaluation:

Attendance and class participation, to be broken down as follows:

5%       attendance including promptness

10%     completion of readings and participation in class discussion

10%     15-minute oral presentation on research project

Research project, to be broken down as follows:

5%       Five brief assignments that form building blocks for the paper (1% each)

                        Note: These will not be graded but must be submitted for credit.

10%     First section, draft

15%     Second section, draft

20%     Full draft including third section and conclusion

25%     Final paper

Required Readings:

Maeda, Daryl J. Chains of Babylon: The Rise of Asian America.

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi.

Nelson, Alondra. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination.

Orleck, Annelise and Lisa Gayle Hazirjian, eds. The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964-1980.

Oropeza, Lorena. ¡Raza Si! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam War Era.

Phillips, Kimberley L. War! What is it Good For? Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq.

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (7th edition) NOTE: Be sure you purchase the correct edition.

The year 2010 marks the 55th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s implementation decision in Brown v. Board of Education decision, the 65th anniversary of Mendez v. Westminster (a school desegregation case that helped pave the way for Brown), and the 45th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. These events had an enormous impact on American politics and culture. But what does it mean to look back at such historic events decades later, with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?  To answer these questions and provide a historical understanding of the modern Civil Rights Movement, this course examines the Civil Rights Movement and the U.S. within the larger context of American society, from World War II to the 1970s. Using a comparative approach, the course traces social movements initiated by African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans and Native Americans. At the same time, we explore the politics, popular culture and social life of this era, considering such topics as the Cold War, mass media, urbanization, and the Vietnam War. Throughout we address such broad themes as American democracy and citizenship, race and racism, gender and sexuality, labor and class conflict. Although the class is primarily a lecture course, students are encouraged to engage critically with the course content through a variety of small and large group discussions and assignments.

Course requirements:

1) Three reading handouts                 (5% each, 15% total)

2) Three in-class mid-term exams      (20% each, 60% total)

3) Five-page essay,                            (25%)

Tentative Reading List:

Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare         :

Crow Dog, Mary.  Lakota Woman

Glisson, Susan M., ed., The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights Movement

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Oropeza, Lorena, ¡Raza Si! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism During the Viet Nam War Era

Sellers, Cleveland. The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC      

Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Problems of race, gender, and national identity continue to preoccupy Americans, both inside and outside of the academy. These subjects and their interrelatedness have become central to much historical inquiry among U.S. scholars, particularly in the last twenty-five years. Such work has profoundly influenced the ways in which many historians approach their research. This graduate research seminar offers students the opportunity to critically discuss major works in the recent historiography of gender, race and national identity in the 20th-century U.S., and to write a research paper on a related topic of their own choosing, preferably based on one of the archival repositories at the University of Texas at Austin. The course will pay particular attention to methodologies by which historians have approached these complex subjects. Our discussion of methodologies will address three core questions: 1) How did these ideas shape and, in turn, were shaped by historical social, economic, cultural and political developments? In other words, in what ways were they historical? 2) How did ideas about gender, race and national identity influence each other. Why, for example, has race frequently been elaborated in gendered terms of manhood and womanhood? Why have understandings of national identity and citizenship been so frequently bound up with ideas of race and gender, and with what consequences? 3) What methodologies have best allowed historians to grapple with the complexity of these ideas and their interrelations? Why does one element or another (e.g., gender), frequently drop out in the actual analysis? Conversely, why do some well-intentioned historians wind up with a “gender chapter” (i.e., a chapter on women), rather than showing its integrality to the entire project?

Course Structure

During the first part of the course we will assess various methodological approaches. We begin with a set of theoretical pieces, and then examine significant monographs that address gender, race and national identity in the context of specific thematic problems. In the early weeks of the course, students also develop ideas for research projects, identify sources, and write a brief proposal. We will visit research libraries on campus. During the middle part of the course, we suspend class meetings while students work independently and attend office hours with the professor. In the final three classes, we reconvene for students to read and comment on each others' drafts.

Course Requirements

1) Regular class attendance, completion of readings, and thoughtful participation in class discussion, including submission of 1-3 questions on reading for that week. These questions/comments will be due by 11 a.m. on the class meeting day.  (20%)

2) Presentation of 15-20 minutes on 1-3 archival documents you are using in your project (10%)

3) Proposal and bibliography (10%)

4) Penultimate draft of research essay, due the Monday before class for discussion either Week 13, 14, or Week 15

6) Final essay, 20-25 pages, due Thursday, May 13, 4:00 p.m., at my office, GAR 2.116. Grade for final paper includes assessment of revisions from original draft. (60%)

Possible Texts (subject to change)

Arredondo, Gabriela. Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity, and Nation, 1916-1939 (2008)

Baldwin, Davarian L. Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity: The Great Migration, & Black Urban Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Greene, Julie. The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.

Holt, Thomas. The Problem of Race in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Lui, Mary Ting Yi.  The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.  

Ngai, Mae. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Reverby, Susan. Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and its Legacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Course Overview: This course intensively examines U.S. women's history between World War II and the 1970s. In doing so, it also explores popular perceptions of womanhood, manhood and sexuality that became central to the cultural politics and social conflicts of the postwar period. By weaving together these topics – women’s history, popular culture, and postwar social movements – we raise fresh questions about well-known episodes of U.S. history. Why, for example, do most Americans remember Rosa Parks only as a demure seamstress who initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott because she was too tired to give up her seat to a white? If every young woman hoped to be like Donna Reed or June Cleaver in the fifties, then where did the sixties movements come from? We also explore how various groups (e.g., suburban girls, working-class women, civil rights activists, immigrants, and others) negotiated ideas of family, work and sexuality. In doing so, we examine roots of issues that continue to have political purchase today, such as reproductive rights, sexuality, job equity, welfare, race, and ethnicity.

Course Activities: This is primarily a discussion seminar, but class will occasionally include short lectures and films. Readings include historical documents, memoirs, scholarly articles and full-length historical studies. The course has a substantial writing component, and is designed to help you develop skills in historical writing and analysis. Students will write regularly to encourage critical thinking and class discussion of readings. Graded assignments include weekly reading summaries, a short media research paper based on popular magazines of the postwar era; and a “Postwar Women’s Memoir Project” based on interviews with women who came of age between World War II and the 1970s.

Possible Readings:

* Bailey, Beth. Sex in the Heartland

* Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media 

* Gilmore, Stephanie, ed. Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States

* Grace, Nancy M. and Ronna C. Johnson, eds., Breaking the Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers

* Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

* Meyerowitz, Joanne, ed. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (noted as NJC on syllabus)

* Santiago, Esmeralda. Almost a Woman

* Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography

Evaluation and Requirements:

10% Attendance, promptness, class participation

20% 350-word weekly analyses of readings (6 total)

20% Media research essay, 5 pages 

35% Final Postwar Women’s Memoir Project essay, 8-10 pages

This course partially fulfills the legislative requirement for American history. 

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?  

Course requirements and grading structure:

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)

Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)

Five-page essay  (25%)

Regular class attendance (5%)

Students are also responsible for completing assigned readings.

This course WILL use + and – letter grades.

Possible required readings:

Coursepack of primary documents and articles

Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :

Crow Dog, Mary.  Lakota Woman

Glisson, Susan M., ed., The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights Movement

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Oropeza, Lorena, ¡Raza Si! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism During the Viet Nam War Era

Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC   

Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

This course partially fulfills the legislative requirement for American history. 

HISTORY OF THE U.S. IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA

HIS 356P / Unique #39760

Same as AFR 374D / 35507, AMS 321 / 30410, MAS 374 / 35937

Spring 2010    UTC 3.134    T TH 9:30 – 11:00

Prof. Laurie Green, Department of History

 Americans recently marked the 50^th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954), the 40^th anniversary of both the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965).  And next year is the 40^th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King. These events had an enormous impact on American politics and culture. But what does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?  To answer these questions and provide a historical understanding of the modern Civil Rights Movement, this course examines the Civil Rights Movement within the larger context of American society, from World War II to the 1970s.

 Course requirements and grading structure:

• Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)
• Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)
• Five-page essay  (25%)
• Students are also responsible for regular class attendance and assigned readings.
• This course WILL use + and – letter grades.

 Required readings:

Coursepack of primary documents and articles

Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :

Crow Dog, Mary.  Lakota Woman

Glisson, Susan M., ed., The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights Movement

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Oropeza, Lorena, ¡Raza Si! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism During the Viet Nam War Era

Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC           

Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Important Notes:

• Regular attendance is required.  After 2 unexcused absences, you will be asked to provide a written excuse (medical emergency or U.T. official business are considered excusable). Students are responsible for obtaining notes on material and announcements missed in class.  Although you may discuss lectures with the instructor or TA, lecture notes will not be provided for missed classes
• Arrive on time and do not leave before end of class. Any exceptions should be discussed with professor beforehand.
• Films screened in class are required course material.  Most films will be placed on reserve at the AV Library after being shown in class.
• Papers must be submitted on the due date unless a written medical excuse or documentation of family emergency is provided.  Papers must be submitted in hard copy, not electronically.  Late papers will result in a loss of 10 points for each day they are late.  Papers should be typed, double-spaced, with 12-point type, and 1" margins. A handout on the paper assignment will be available prior to the due date.
• Exams must be taken on the scheduled date unless a written medical excuse or documentation of family emergency or university-related conflict is provided.  Make-up exams will be granted for anyone who misses an exam, but those without such documentation will have 10 points deducted from the exam grade.
• Blackboard will be used by the instructor and TA to post class announcements, office hours, lecture outlines, and assignments, including reading handouts.
• Special accommodations will be provided, upon request, for qualified students with learning disabilities.  Contact the Dean of Students office at 471-6259 or 471-4641.
• Academic Integrity: The University of Texas adheres strictly to guidelines regarding academic integrity, including cheating and plagiarism.  These guidelines extend to all material found on the worldwide web, as well as to all print material.  Penalties for violations may include loss of credit for the course. For the history department’s guidelines, see: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/history/about/academic_integrity/

            COURSE SCHEDULE

Week 1:  Introduction: Why Study the Civil Rights Movement Today?

Week 2:  READ: Takaki, Introduction through ch. 5

Week 3:  READ: Takaki, ch. 6-7, Coursepack selection (“Rosie”)

Written Assignment: Reading handout on Takaki

Week 4: READ: Glisson, ch. 7, Oropeza, ch. 1

Week 5:  READ: Coursepack selections (Dudziak; Fairclough)

Week 6: READ: Glisson, ch. 2; Martin, 7-19, 76-86, 91-100, 110-120

EXAM #1  Bring blue books and ink pens.                             

Week 7: READ: Martin, 121-23, 137-51, 156-62, 168-98, 199-223; Coursepack selections (Ruiz, Mendez, Robinson)

Written Assignment: Reading handout on Martin

Week 8:  READ: Coursepack selections (Blue, Daniel)

Week 9:  READ: Sellers, ch. 1-5, Glisson, ch. 8-11

Week 10:  READ: Sellers, ch. 6-9

Exam #2  Bring blue books and ink pens.

Week 11:  READ: Coursepack selection (Green), Cone, ch. 3-4, 7-8, Sellers, ch. 11-12, 14-19

Week 12:  READ: Cone, ch. 9, Oropeza, ch. 2-3

5-Page Essay due.

Week 13:  READ: Oropeza, ch. 4-5, Glisson, ch. 14

Week 14:  READ: Glisson, ch. 13, 15, 16, Mary Crow Dog, ch. 1-11 (ch. 12-16, optional)

Writing Assignment: Reading handout on Mary Crow Dog

Week 15: READ: Coursepack selection (Kozol)

EXAM #3  Bring blue books and ink pens.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?

Possible texts-

Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :

Mankiller, Wilma. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. 

Garcia, Mario T. Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC           

Strum, Philippa. Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Civil Rights. 

Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Grading:

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)

Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)

Five-page essay  (25%)

Regular class attendance (5%)

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?

Possible texts-

Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :

Mankiller, Wilma. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. 

Garcia, Mario T. Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC           

Strum, Philippa. Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Civil Rights. 

Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Grading:

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)

Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)

Five-page essay  (25%)

Regular class attendance (5%)

Please check back for updates.

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?

Possible texts-

Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :

Mankiller, Wilma. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. 

Garcia, Mario T. Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC           

Strum, Philippa. Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Civil Rights. 

Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Grading:

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)

Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)

Five-page essay  (25%)

Regular class attendance (5%)

Please check back for updates.

A half century after the high point of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., most American students learn about the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1957 Little Rock conflict over school desegregation, the 1963 March on Washington, and the fire hoses in Birmingham. Far fewer encounter the less-televised moments of civil rights history, the meanings of freedom that included but went beyond desegregation, and the breadth of participation by local people. It is even less common to consider other movements that paralleled the black freedom movement among, for example, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative perspective, this upper division lecture course explores these aspects of the civil rights era. It also examines their larger historical context within American culture from the Second World War to the present. Finally, we consider questions about the writing of history: What does it mean to look back at such historic events with the benefit of hindsight?  How did they come about?  What changed?  What did not?

Possible texts-

Cone, James H . Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare            :

Mankiller, Wilma. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People. 

Garcia, Mario T. Blowout! Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice

Martin, Waldo E.  Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents

Sellers, Cleveland.  The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC           

Strum, Philippa. Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican American Civil Rights. 

Takaki, Ronald.  Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

Grading:

Three reading handouts  (5% each, 15% total)

Three in-class exams  (20% each, 60% total)

Five-page essay  (25%)

Regular class attendance (5%)

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.