Winter 2009

PoliSci - 489.004

Citizenship and its Modern Challenges

This undergraduate seminar is a comprehensive survey of citizenship practices around the world with a special emphasis on its modern challenges. It concentrates on a detailed examination of existing tensions between states and citizens on the one hand and nations and citizens on the other. The course has three thematically interrelated sections. First, we will examine the evolving meaning and practice of citizenship, from ancient Greece through the early 20th century. Here, students will be exposed to the writings by prominent thinkers whose ideas have profoundly influenced modern conceptions of politics, nation, state and citizenry. The second section embarks on an exciting analytical examination of various views of citizenship and community. Specifically, students will be exposed to the ideas and theories about citizenship and community by eight major schools of thought: Liberalism, Communitarianism, Liberal Nationalism, Multiculturalism, the Politics of Recognition, Cosmopolitanism, Diaspora and Transnational Politics, and Post-Nationalism. The third section is devoted to a comparative analysis of empirical studies from around the world. Empirical case-studies elaborate on challenging dilemmas of citizenship laws and immigration policies based on civic and ethnic ideals and national self-perceptions. Within this context, students will accumulate substantial knowledge about contentious claims to communal belonging and political membership. Finally, through a comprehensive analysis of historically significant citizenship systems and nationality policies in the Soviet Empire, the supra-national European Union and the United States as a traditional immigrant-recipient political community, students will gain a comparative perspective on failed and workable schema for membership in political and national communities.