CCSS 200 - Rural Poverty in our Time (a Common Course offered for credit)
This course will use an interdisciplinary format to explore the history of non-urban poverty in the American South from the 1930s to the present. Weaving together the social histories of poor people, the political history of poverty policies, and the history of representations of poverty, the course follows historical cycles of attention and neglect: rural poverty during the Great Depression, rural poverty from the war on poverty to the Reagan Revolution, and rural poverty in the new Gilded Age, the present. In each section, we will examine the relationship between representations (imagining poverty), policies (alleviating poverty), and results (the effects of those representations and policies in the economic, political, and psychological status of poor people) as an adjunct course it pays particular attention to the gender of rural poverty. As part of the course requirements, students are required to complete 20 hours of volunteer work working on some aspect of poverty.