Critical Race Theory Now

Moving beyond the reductive and polarizing deployment of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in current political discourse, this interdisciplinary seminar traces its history as a legal intervention foregrounding race and racism in the development of U.S. law and in the (infra)structures of U.S. civic, socioeconomic, and political life. Together, we will explore the central tenets of CRT, including the ubiquity and permanence of racism, intersectionality, whiteness as property and currency, and redistributive justice. Reading seminal texts of CRT alongside contemporary African American literature, we will attend to specific topics, such as affirmative action, immigration, mass incarceration, and reparations. The overarching inquiry of this course is: (1) how might the law be complicit in upholding racial hierarchy as well hierarchies of gender, class, sexuality, and citizenship, and (2) how might the law and literature be used to dismantle those same hierarchies?