CTZN 110 (Honors) – Bodies and Citizens

CTZN 110 is a foundation level course at Longwood University. All first-year students are required to take this course within their first two semesters at Longwood University. As a member of the Cormier Honors College, I was given access to exclusive, honors sections of the course. Each section has a different “theme”, but the general idea of the course is the same. CTZN 110 is offered to instill the values of citizen leadership and teach students what makes a citizen leader, which is the basis of the new Civitae core curriculum.

The section of CTZN 110 that I chose to take was called Bodies and Citizens. The course was taught by Dr. Hannah Dudley-Shotwell, a Cormier Honors College faculty scholar. In this course, we analyzed how the American idea of citizenship has evolved over time. Our first unit was set in colonial America and we worked our way towards our last unit, which was about late 20th century / modern American citizenship. The class was heavily focused on in-class discussions and oral presentations. Before every lecture, we were assigned a reading that we were to read and annotate to prepare for a class discussion about the reading, during which we would share our thoughts and comments regarding the reading. The class discussion usually lead to the main topic of the reading/lecture, which was how our idea of citizenship was different than the idea of citizenship during the time period we were exploring. The discussion also helped us to explore the different social and cultural factors that molded the idea of citizenship. At the end of every unit, we were to give a presentation (in a three-minute thesis format) on how factors from the time period relate to modern themes. However, we were not on our own. The class was divided into four groups of four students. For each unit, our groups would work together to choose the topic of the presentation, form an outline for the presentation, and create a visual aid (usually a single PowerPoint slide) to use during the presentation. Only one member of the group needed to present for each unit, but every member of the group was responsible for preparing that unit’s presenter for their presentation. I enjoyed this process because it allowed for multiple viewpoints to come together instead of only the presenter’s view being used in the presentation. The final project for this class was to design another CTZN 110 class that would somehow relate to the content taught in Bodies and Citizens. This project was one of the most interesting that I have had to complete at Longwood as it helped to synthesize information from the class and outside sources to create a coherent course. For example, my course was about the advancement of STEM fields and how it affected women. I used information regarding women’s roles in society in different time periods that we learned in class and outside sources that helped to specify how the advancement of STEM impacted them. For the submission of the project, we were to submit a syllabus, a visual aid, and a screencast of ourselves presenting the course in front of the visual aid.

Because of this class, I was able to gain a new perspective on the idea of citizenship. Before taking this class, I thought that the idea of citizenship was concrete. I never took the time to think about how different groups of people were treated as “lesser citizens” based on social and cultural factors. However, after this class used historical context and primary sources to explain this, I have a new understanding of how different groups had to fight for equal citizenship. I was especially surprised during our unit about modern citizenship because I had been completely oblivious of how LGBTQ+ and women were still trying to be considered true “citizens” during the 20th century. I believe that this shows how easy it is to ignore social and cultural cues from the past, especially if they do not directly affect you.

Linked above is the syllabus that I submitted for the final project of this course. The main challenge of this assignment was finding solid, credible sources to use for the course. However, since the topic involved something I am passionate about, STEM, I found that I was able to read and analyze the sources much easier and efficiently than if I was not passionate about the readings. While completing this assignment, I was able to learn more about how STEM’s advancements made an impact on women’s lives. It was especially interesting to see how women’s roles evolved alongside STEM fields. For example, as new forms of birth control were made available, society’s view of women changed dramatically. After the birth control pill was introduced, there was a plethora of unethical testing being performed on Puerto Rican women. As a result, a negative stigma was placed alongside the pill. After completing this assignment, I have now realized that while advancements in STEM are greatly seen as positive, to different groups of people, these advancements can carry negative effects, like a negative stigma surrounding women that use the birth control pill and how modern sciences can lead to pseudosciences, like eugenics.