Constructing and Contesting Nordic Whiteness in America

4 credits · Undergraduate

This course will explore how Scandinavian–American encounters have shaped racial formation and racialization in America, particularly focusing on how ‘the Nordic’ came to be perceived in popular discourse as an embodiment of whiteness. Which interpretations of national, colonial, and imperial histories and contemporary realities allowed for this? Who has been included and excluded? And how does the racial construct of Nordic whiteness function and inform current American understandings of whiteness, Scandinavian heritage and the Nordic region? To answer these questions, the course engages perspectives from Black, Indigenous, and White communities, as well as from people who identify across these categorizations, in America and Scandinavia.