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CS92PROD
The Race Makers: How the Enlightenment Invented the Most Dangerous Idea in History
FREN 301
Fall 2023
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: SISP 303

The concept of race was first "invented" during the 18th century by anatomists, natural historians, and, ultimately, the century's classifiers. While this seminar is constructed as something of an intellectual history seminar, it will also delve into the lives and (often messy) psychologies of several of the people who helped develop the idea of race during the eighteenth century. We will become familiar with a French king and the signatory of the Code Noir (Louis XIV), the Swedish inventor of the term Homo sapiens (Linnaeus), the theorist of human degeneration from a white prototype (Buffon), the most famous philosopher of the eighteenth century (Voltaire), the theorist of human stage theory (Robertson), a skull-measuring naturalist (Blumenbach), and an American president, in Thomas Jefferson. The class will also examine 16 manuscripts that were submitted to a contest on the source of "blackness" organized by the Bordeaux Royal Academy of Sciences in 1739. The goal of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the origins of race that will inform their reactions to this question as both a historical concept, and an ongoing problem that affects all of us in the present.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS RLAN
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (HRAD-MN)(STS)
Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89%

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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