Europe and the Invention of Race

This upper-level seminar in European intellectual history will examine key texts from the 16th through the 20th century in which the negotiation of difference and diversity produced and questioned the organization of populations into groups and hierarchies called races. How does “race thinking,” with its spectrum from racism to critical race thinking, channel and direct phenomena such as European global expansions, capitalism and slavery, religious difference and secularization, colonialism, imperialism, and fascism.