Undergraduate Course: The American Civil Rights Movement (HIST10155)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 40 |
ECTS Credits | 20 |
| Summary | The Civil Rights Movement constituted one of the key American social movements of the twentieth century and influenced the development of other social movements both within and outside the United States. Since the 1980s, there has been a stream of research monographs about civil rights, and that trend has accelerated in recent years, with the result that conflicting schools of interpretation have emerged. The course seeks to provide students with a good understanding of the Civil Rights Movement's origins, development, composition, and long-term impact. |
| Course description |
The course examines key themes in the history of the Civil Rights Movement and its legacy from its origins until the 1980s. Key issues include the tracing and dating the movement's origins; the question of continuity and discontinuity in the civil rights struggle; the role of the federal government, women, religion, and organised labour; the Cold War and the civil rights movement; the utility of nonviolence and violence in the civil rights movement; the role of Martin Luther King, Jr.; the disintegration of the national civil rights coalition; the civil rights movement in the North and West; the post-Selma southern civil rights movement; and the movement's longevity and long-term impact.
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Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Full Year |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
400
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 44,
Summative Assessment Hours 3,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 8,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
345 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
80 %,
Practical Exam
20 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Coursework:
2 x 1,000 words historiographical essay (each worth 10%)
2 x 4,000 word research essay (each worth 30%)
Non-Written Skills:
Presentations with supporting materials (20%)
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| Feedback |
Students will receive written feedback on their coursework, and will have the opportunity to discuss that feedback further with the Course Organiser during their published office hours or by appointment. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate command of the body of knowledge considered in the course;
- Read, analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship;
- Understand, evaluate and utilise a variety of primary source material;
- Develop and sustain scholarly arguments in written form, by formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence;
- Demonstrate independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others.
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Reading List
Danielle L. McGuire & John Dittmer (eds.), Freedom Rights: New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011).
Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff, Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
Kevin M. Kruse & Stephen Tuck, Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Michael J. Klarman, "How Brown Changed Race Relations: The Backlash Thesis", Journal of American History 81 (June 1994): 81-118.
Iwan Morgan and Philip Davies (eds), From Sit-ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012).
Aldon Morris, "Birmingham Confrontation Reconsidered: An Analysis of the Dynamics and Tactics of Mobilization", American Sociological Review 58 (October 1993): 621-36.
Sylvia Ellis, Freedom's Pragmatist: Lyndon Johnson and Civil Rights (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014).
Timothy Tyson, "Robert F. Williams, 'Black Power,' and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle," Journal of American History 85 (1998).
Aniko Bodroghkozy, Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012).
Stokely Carmichael, 'What We Want' New York Review of Books, 1966.
Elizabeth Hinton, "A war within our own boundaries:" Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the rise of the carceral state,' Journal of American History, Vol. 102 (2015). |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | American Civil Rights Movement |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Megan Hunt
Tel: (0131 6)50 9110
Email: Megan.Hunt@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Katy Robinson
Tel: (0131 6)50 3780
Email: krobins3@ed.ac.uk |
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