Senses of Brown

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

While it has become increasingly common to talk of brownness as a racial and cultural category in the U.S., brownness remains largely under-theorized. This course invites students to take part in an emerging conversation about the meanings of brownness, its conceptual and material histories from to the nineteenth century, which witnessed the popularization of race science and rapid colonial expansion, to the present day. In what ways, if any, does the idea of brownness cohere as a concept, and how does it relate to more commonly discussed ideas of whiteness and Blackness? In what ways does the term work for or against rigid notions of racial difference? And, perhaps most important, what, if any, emancipatory potential does the term offer us?