Debt Threats

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Debt Threats: The Cultural Politics of Capitalism Debt is a topic that makes news headlines regularly: politicians propose plans to eliminate student debt, the national debt rises, and debt is hampering access to medical care. Debt is deepening inequalities, and while it has been a focus for scholars of economics, it is also increasingly a concern for those who study US culture. In this seminar, we marshal scholarship from Women's and Gender Studies and from on-the-ground activists to understand how debt functions, whom it fails, and what it says about economic inequality and its relationship to race and gender in the contemporary US. We will work together to understand the moral charge of debt and we will investigate how ideas about "financial responsibility" circulate. The course begins with an introduction to racial capitalism; then, the remaining class meetings are organized around topics including student debt, medical debt, housing debt, reparations for Black Americans, municipal/state/national debt, incarceration, and climate debt. For instance, when we study student debt, we will learn that Black women borrow at disproportionate rates in order to access the same education as their peers; and when we study climate debt, we will learn that those most responsible for producing climate change are also most shielded from its harms. Debt, we will learn, is an issue of racial justice, gender justice, and economic justice.