Freshman Seminar: Civil Rights

3 units

This course examines both the chronological and thematic frameworks of the American civil rights movement: the architecture of segregation; its evolution as a social movement; and aspect of the movement's legal strategies, student activism, and militancy. The course ends by considering the varied goals and outcomes, raising questions about the meaning of race and rights in contemporary America. Although based in scholarly readings, the course also uses films, music, memoirs, biographies, art, fiction, and theatre as the vehicles through which activists recorded their own histories. Freshmen only.