Postgraduate Course: The Civil Rights Movement (PGHC11192)
Course Outline
School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
Summary | The course examines the Civil Rights Movement in the United States by taking a thematic approach centred on issues of historiographical debate, augmented by examination of a range of primary sourced material.
*This course is not available for auditing* |
Course description |
On successful completion of the course, students will have developed a detailed knowledge and understanding of the Civil Rights Movement and key historiographical issues. Specifically, they will be able to discuss and analyse issue of continuity and discontinuity in the movement's history; be able to debate the extent of the movement's success and the issue of defining success; have developed an advanced understanding of the ideas of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his contribution to the movement; and have formulated a defensible conception of the role of the major civil rights groups and a sophisticated understanding of their interaction. Topics include historiographical approaches to the Civil Rights Movement, the origins of the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War and civil rights, resistance to civil rights, movement protests, women in the Civil Rights Movement, the role of Martin Luther King, Jr., armed self-defence and the southern Civil Rights Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement after King.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- demonstrate a detailed and critical command of a body of knowledge concerning the Civil Rights Movement in the United States;
- analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship and primary source materials concerning the Civil Rights Movement in the United States;
- develop and sustain original scholarly arguments in oral and written form by independently formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence considered in the course;
- demonstrate originality and independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others; and a considerable degree of autonomy.
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Reading List
Peter B. Levy (ed.), Let Freedom Ring!: A Documentary History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement (Westport, Conn.:
Praeger, 1992)
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)
Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Jang, "The 'Long Movement' as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies", Journal of African American History 92 (Spring 2007): 265-88
Charles W. Eagles, "Toward New Histories of the Civil Rights Era", Journal of Southern History 66 (November 2000): 815-48
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past", Journal of American History 91 (March 2005): 1233-63
Steven F. Lawson, "Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement", American Historical Review 96 (April 1991): 456-71
Steven Lawson and Charles Payne, Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968 (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998).
Jeanne Theoharis, "Black Freedom Studies: Re-imagining and Redefining the Fundamentals", History Compass 4 (2006): 348-67 |
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
Special Arrangements |
This course is not available for auditing |
Keywords | Civil Rights Movement |
Contacts
Course organiser | Dr Mark Newman
Tel: (0131 6)50 3759
Email: |
Course secretary | |
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