Knowledge, Race, and Justice: A Transhistorical Perspective
CHUM 342
Fall 2015 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
AFAM 342, HIST 346 |
This course examines the relation between the production of knowledge and discourses of race/alterity in three significant historical moments: during the 16th-century expansion of Spain into the Americas, the 18th-century Enlightenment in Europe, and in the late 19th- and early 20th-century postbellum United States. In each period, a school of thought will be under investigation. The course begins with the Spanish School of Salamanca's discussion of the "affairs of the Indies," undertaken in the context of the then-emergent juridical/natural law perspective that was articulated as the primary basis of ethical judgments and that served as the conceptual framework within which the question of the status of the Indigenous peoples and the expropriations of their lands was to be considered. Then the course moves to the European Enlightenment (Scottish, French, and German), where one of the central preoccupations remained a new taxonomy classifying human groups, this as part of an increasing scientific perspective. Finally, the Dunning School of historiography, located primarily at Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities, is examined. The formulations of this school of thought emerged in the aftermath of the Civil War and provided intellectual justification for the reconfiguration of racial hierarchy during the era of Reconstruction and beyond. Moreover, several of the prominent historians associated with the school played an important role in the founding and in the early development of the professionalization of the discipline of history in the United States.
Each school of thought will be examined for its respective insights as well as for the limitations that we can perceive from a contemporary standpoint. These intellectual movements will be analyzed for their conceptualization that made the colonization of the Americas (in the case of the Spanish), the hierarchical categorization of human groups (in the case of the Enlightenment), or the reaffirmation of a postslavery racial hierarchy (in the case of the United States) seem legitimate and just. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS CHUM |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (HIST-MN)(HIST) |
Major Readings:
Primary source readings will be taken from the following texts:
Johann Blumenbach, ON THE NATURAL VARIETY OF MANKIND
Comte de Buffon, NATURAL HISTORY, GENERAL AND PARTICULAR
William Dunning, THE UNDOING OF RECONSTRUCTION
Johann Gottfried Herder, IDEAS FOR THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HISTORY OF MANKIND
David Hume, ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
Immanuel Kant, OF THE DIFFERENT HUMAN RACES and other essays and excerpts
Baron de Montesquieu, THE SPIRIT OF THE LAWS
James Ford Rhodes, HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865
Francisco Vitoria, ON THE AMERICAN INDIANS
François-Marie Voltaire, OF THE DIFFERENT RACES OF MEN
Secondary source readings will be taken from the following texts:
André A. Alves and José M. Moreira, THE SALAMANCA SCHOOL
Andrew Curran, THE ANATOMY OF BLACKNESS: SCIENCE AND SLAVERY IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Anthony Pagden, LORDS OF ALL THE WORLD: IDEOLOGIES OF EMPIRE IN SPAIN, BRITAIN, AND FRANCE
John David Smith, OLD CREED FOR A NEW SOUTH: PROSLAVERY IDEOLOGY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY and SLAVERY, RACE AND AMERICAN HISTORY: HISTORICAL CONFLICT, TRENDS, AND METHOD, 1866-1953
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Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly response essays, oral presentations, and a final research paper. There will be reading required and a written assignment due for the first day of class September 2, 2013. Students enrolled in the course will be contacted by the professor well before the beginning of the semester regarding the specifics of the assignment. |
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