Courses

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor. (Seminar). Who is a citizen? How has the notion of citizenship changed in American history? Questions of American citizenship - who can claim it and what it entails -- have been fiercely contested since the founding of the United States. Scholars have articulated various ways of conceptualizing citizenship: as a formal legal status; as a collection of state-protected rights; as political activity; and as a form of identity and solidarity. In this seminar, well explore the role that literature and literary criticism have played in both shaping and responding to the narratives and civic myths that determine what it means to be an American citizen.