Identity Coursepack

The second coursepack of the year engages the second SK theme: Identity.

Where the Explorers coursepack was purposefully wide-ranging, this second text is more streamlined. The topic at hand is the definition of American.

The first half of the anthology provides readings on the intentions of this newfangled nation, and the narrative of how the decision was reached to break away from the most liberal-minded and humanitarian kingdom in human history (not to say the British Empire was atrocity-free). In the end we created a document called the Constitution, loyalty to which entitled one to full-fledged citizenship, regardless of background.

Discovery of America	Paul La Farge	1
New Colossus	Emma Lazarus	6
What Is an American?	Hector St Jean de Crevecoeur	7
Gettysburg Address	Abraham Lincoln	9
Four Freedoms	Franklin Delano Roosevelt	10
Wordy Shipmates	Sarah Vowell	11
Fifty Years	Larry Gonick	14
Ohio, 1754	Larry Gonick	16
Americans & Empire	Edmund Morgan	20
Oops!	Larry Gonick	27
Constitution	Larry Gonick	38

This wasn't actually true, of course. Most Americans weren't citizens in our earliest years, and most suffered deeply from this denial. Changes were required and still are. The greatest characteristic of the Constitution is that changes to it are built right in. This process began even before its ratification, with the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments. Since then, most of the Amendments have the effect of distributing the rights of American citizens more widely.

The second half of the coursepack explores this process.

Amendments	Congress	39
Literacy	Frederick Douglass	44
Douglass Meets Lincoln	Larry Gonick	47
How It Feels	Zora Neale Hurston	48
Creation Stories	Barbara Kingsolver	50
Phoenix, Arizona	Sherman Alexie	53
House on Mango Street	Sandra Cisneros	61
American Born Chinese	Gene Luen Yang	68
Undeterred by Reality	Molly Ivins	87