What's the Big Idea? Race

4.0 credits · Undergraduate

This course offers a multidisciplinary introductory survey of the constructions and uses of ideas and practices of race from the 15th century to the present. The first third explores the question of when a history of race might properly begin. Were ancient peoples racist? What of the Middle Ages? What were the relationships between religion and race; race and slavery; and race and color symbolism? The second third explores the question of whether there is a modern concept of race that is different from earlier race concepts. How do we account for races versus racialized people? How do signifiers like gender, sexuality, disability and nation impact the process of racialization? What are the means and methods through which racial ideas circulated? …. The final part of the course… considers the ways that contemporary processes of racialization operate through political and economic institutions to structure everyday life and politics. We will examine modes of power and agency among peoples who have experienced racialized oppression, even while assessing the ways powerful institutions have shaped their lives.