3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

Despite its well-known idiosyncrasies, the American state has consistently wielded substantial power, and many Americans have long experienced the state’s power as potent, omnipresent, and structuring their lives in important ways. This research-based course will examine theories of the state and political authority both from “above” - considering the political sources of both the American state’s power and its limitations - and from “below,” using people’s own narratives and political formations to explore how Americans develop knowledge about the state, confront and resist the state’s power, and expand or shift its distribution of ‘public’ goods. How do people understand the state, theorize its operations and possibilities, deploy it, and sometimes build parallel structures of provision and governance? We explore several cases of when people marginalized by race, class, gender, or precarious legal standing organized deep challenges to state power and transformed state authority. Considering the state as both formal structure and frame for everyday experience can offer a fresh perspective on contemporary democratic challenges and political struggles. Students will conduct original research using archives and sources like the American Prison Writing Archive, oral history archives like the Ralph Bunche collection and HistoryMakers collection, and archival sources in the History Vault such as the Kerner Commission interviews. The course is appropriate for advanced undergraduates (juniors and seniors), preferably having taken courses in political science or related coursework, and graduate students in political science, history, and sociology.