LIT & AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP

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, we’ll 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.

Because literature dwells in the ambiguity and ambivalence that legal definitions seek to avoid, an examination of literature across American history can illuminate otherwise-hidden aspects of citizenship. We’ll see that the American promise of citizenship—the idea that citizens of the United States can experience personal sovereignty—has been compromised and unfulfilled for many; definitions of citizenship have often exerted economic, religious, racial, and sexual power.

By looking at literature that wrestles with questions of citizenship, we will strive to uncover the ways that legal, abstract notions of citizenship reveal themselves in the everyday lives of individuals. We will investigate how literary texts shape citizens, whose lives may be determined not only by political boundaries and legal definitions but also by emotional affiliations and psychological allegiances. As we read American literary texts alongside political theory and historical writing, we’ll ask a number of questions about the relationship between literature and citizenship, including:

• What is the political power of literature?
• How does writing call into being certain kinds of citizens? Who is included and who is left out?
• How are texts political agents?