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
| Not being delivered |
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
Mark Newman, The Civil Rights Movement (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004).
Raymond D'Angelo (ed.), The American Civil Rights Movement (New York: McGraw-Hill/Duskin, 2001).
Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000 (New York: Penguin Books, 2002)
Robert Cook, Sweet Land of Liberty? The African-American Struggle for Civil Rights in the Twentieth Century (London: Longman, 1998)
Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2018)
Charles W. Eagles, "Toward New Histories of the Civil Rights Era", Journal of Southern History 66 (November 2000): 815-48 |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | American Civil Rights Movement |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Mark Newman
Tel: (0131 6)50 3759
Email: m.newman@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Claire Brown
Tel: (0131 6)50 3582
Email: cbrown20@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
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