Undergraduate Course: Atticus Finch's America: White Liberals and Race in the United States, 1930-2008 (HIST10478)
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 | This course explores key themes, events, and ideologies in twentieth-century US history through the lens of the American century's most beloved novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Over the course of this special subject, students will consider the role of literature, film, and popular culture more generally, in the construction of the US's civil rights narrative.
In particular, students will be encouraged to consider the successes and failures of white liberals, many of whom sought to influence and control both the progress and narrative of African American freedom. In Mockingbird's central character of Atticus Finch, white moderates found their hero, but the character's 'go slow' approach to civil rights is reflective of a broader strand of American white liberalism that stretched from the New Deal to the twenty-first century. This course therefore explores wider themes from the initial vantage point of one of the United States' most beloved cultural productions, examining both its influence and its representativeness in its assumption of an unquestioned white gaze and audience. |
Course description |
After some initial responses to To Kill a Mockingbird as novel and film, students will explore chronological events in US history and politics, with particular focus on the US South of the novel's setting. They will read articles and books from historians, literary scholars, cultural critics, and lawyers, many of whom have made direct connections between the book's setting during the Depression, its release in the 1960s, and its continued reverence amongst white Americans. This allows engagement with key events such as the New Deal, the Scottsboro trial, the civil rights movement, white backlash politics of the 1970s and 1980s, affirmative action, and the complicated legacy of southern white liberal presidents, notably Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton.
Along the way, students will address key questions in twentieth-century US domestic history, from the central narrative of racial protest and progress, the vexed nature of liberal or moderate politics, and the relative successes and failures of the civil rights era. Atticus Finch's America therefore encourages students to complicate and question the continued longevity of the white moderate politics Harper Lee's hero reflected, as well as the reasons for its frequent rejection by African Americans, including high-profile snubs by James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. It ultimately examines the continued reverence shown towards To Kill a Mockingbird as a cultural and literary icon, despite or perhaps because of the politics it reflected.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
Prohibited Combinations | Students MUST NOT also be taking
The American Civil Rights Movement (HIST10155)
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Other requirements | A pass in 40 credits of third level historical courses or equivalent.
Before enrolling students on this course, Personal Tutors are asked to contact the History Honours Admission Administrator to ensure that a place is available (Tel: 504030). |
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- demonstrate competence in core skills in the study of History: essay-writing, independent reading, group discussion, oral presentation, small-group autonomous learning
- show detailed knowledge of the key events of twentieth-century US history and culture
- plan and execute substantial written analyses of chosen aspects of twentieth-century US history and culture, related to course themes
- evaluate and apply recent critical debates in the study of race, racism, and US culture
- demonstrate the ability to reflect critically on a variety of critical and methodological approaches to race and US history, literature, and culture
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Reading List
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).
Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman(London: William Heinemann, 2015).
Joseph Crespino, Atticus Finch: The Biography (New York: Basic Books, 2018).
William Melvin Kelley, A Different Drummer (1962).
James Baldwin, 'Everyone's Protest Novel,' Notes of a Native Son (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).
Jodi Melamed, Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2011).
Imani Perry, More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States (New York University Press, 2011).
Roopali Mukherjee, The Racial Order of Things: Cultural Imaginaries of the Post-Soul Era (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
Adolph Reed (ed.), Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and Our Retreat from Racial Equality (New York: Routledge, 1999).
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).
Maureen E. Markey, 'Natural Law, Positive Law, and Conflicting Social norms in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird,' 32 North Carolina Central Law Review (2009).
Tony Badger, 'Fatalism, Not Gradualism: The Crisis of Southern Liberalism, 1945-65,' in Brian Ward & Tony Badger (eds.) The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement (New York University Press, 1996). |
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
- Skills in research development and analysis
- Oral communication skills
- Written communication skills
- Group working |
Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
Course organiser | Dr Megan Hunt
Tel: (0131 6)50 9110
Email: |
Course secretary | Miss Sara Dennison
Tel: (0131 6)50 2501
Email: |
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