Deaths and Afterlives of Columbus

3 credits · Undergraduate

Explores the myth of Christopher Columbus in the US across poetry, popular culture (TV, music), and material culture (statues, monuments), with a focus on Columbus as a key site of ethnic and racial identity formation in the US. Black diasporic and Indigenous perspectives are placed in conversation with those of Italian Americans--a group that has historically been a limit-case for the equation of Europeanness with whiteness. Students will deepen their understandings of the multiplicity and contested nature of ethnic and racial identities, as they emerge from and contribute to foundational myths and their meanings over time.