Exploring the "American Obsession" Down Under

Race may be, as Studs Terkel claimed, the “American obsession,” but it is an obsession that many foreigners clearly share.1 In recent years, scholars based outside the United States have published much of the best scholarship on civil rights and race relations, and the subject plays a central role in the teaching of U.S. history abroad, particularly in Great Britain.2 Much of this topic's appeal for both undergraduates and teachers may reflect how it exposes the gap between America's profession of democratic ideals and their realization. The subject also has particular relevance for Australia, a country confronting its own long history of white domination of its indigenous people, although some students are more comfortable critiquing America's record rather than examining their own society. Nevertheless, the interest in learning about civil rights history remains, and the concept of race provides a defining theme that can be used to focus broad courses on American history. When teaching American history from afar, breadth of coverage is particularly important, as students are unlikely to have the background knowledge that allows U.S. universities to run more specialized courses

American history · Appeal · Civil rights · Democracy · Indigenous · Library science · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Scholarship · Sociology · Subject (documents · Theme (computing · White (mutation · Anthropology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society

• The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past

  Jacquelyn Dowd Hall•Journal of American History•2005

  Add to list