WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2022-2023       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Color Lines: The U.S. South and the Colonial World
AMST 290
Spring 2023 not offered

The American South has always been a unique society. But it has never been exceptional or isolated from the world. Although located north of the equator, it shares many features with the Global South. Its history of conquest, slavery, patriarchy, rebellion, and white supremacy makes it similar to many tropical and semitropical countries that have been colonized by Western powers in modern times. In this course we will study the American South from the times of European colonization through the Civil Rights era. We will establish comparisons between the history of the American South and the histories of the Global South. How did the displacement of Native Americans in Georgia compare to the treatment of Indigenous populations in Australia? How did slavery in Virginia compare to slavery in Brazil? How did the emergence of the oil industry in Texas compare to that of Iran? How did Jim Crow in Mississippi compare to apartheid in South Africa? How did the struggle for civil rights in Alabama compare to struggles for decolonization in Vietnam?

In addition to a comparative approach, we will look into how Southerners engaged with people from the Global South. We will study primary and secondary sources that illuminate encounters between Southerners and foreigners. International trade, religious missions, infrastructural enterprises, political activism, and military operations, among many other events, put the American South in touch with the Global South. These encounters remade modernity, placing questions of racism, regionalism, and colonialism at the forefront of political and intellectual debates.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS AMST
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (AMST)

Last Updated on MAR-29-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459