Race Discourse in the Americas
HIST 329
Fall 2015 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
AFAM 303 |
This course investigates the belief system of race from its emergence in the early modern era to its contemporary relevance in various social and political issues. To examine the formation of the modern world, the course begins with the 15th-century expansion of Western Judaeo-Christian Europe into Africa and the Americas. Then, it will examine the significance of race in several meaningful contexts, including the expropriation of Indigenous in the Americas, the enslavement of Africans, 18th-century Enlightenment thinking, and the 19th-century shift to a "scientific" explanatory model. As well, the phenomenon of race in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and its rearticulation in relation to discourses of diversity and multiculturalism after the 1960s will be analyzed. Rather than employing the liberal humanist emphasis on "race relations" or a materialist analysis that views it as an epiphenomenon of an ostensibly more fundamental class dynamic, the course adopts a perspective of race as a organizing principle that institutes our present hegemonically-Western global order. To this end, the class will illustrate that race is but a secular variant of how human societies have organized and reproduced their cultural models. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS HIST |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (HIST-MN)(HIST) |
Major Readings:
Michelle Alexander, THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF COLORBLINDNESS
Bruce Baum, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CAUCASIAN RACE: A POLITICAL HISTORY OF RACIAL IDENTITY
Frantz Fanon, BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS
Thomas M. Shapiro, THE HIDDEN COST OF BEING AFRICAN AMERICAN: HOW WEALTH PERPETUATES INEQUALITY
Robert A. Williams, THE AMERICAN INDIAN IN WESTERN LEGAL THOUGHT: THE DISCOURSES OF CONQUEST
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Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly essays, oral presentations, and a final essay.
Note: There is a reading and written assignment for the first day of class. |
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