Whiteness and Language

How has whiteness shaped language—not specific languages or sub-varieties of languages, but the very idea of language itself? This class will not presume either whiteness or language as stable or self-evident categories. Instead, we will explore how both have emerged together in and through projects of (racial, ethnic, gendered, sexual, classed, religious, etc.) colonial modernity. The class will introduce students to a critical interdisciplinary toolkit that they will collaboratively apply to a selection of case studies drawn from global colonial situations, culminating in an original mini-research project.