Race and Ethnicity

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will introduce students to major theories, topics, debates and cutting edge research in the field of race and ethnicity. During this semester we will engage with important issues in the field, such as the utility of race and ethnicity as concepts; how racial and ethnic ‘groupness’ is formed, classified and inhabited; and explaining persisting racial and ethnic inequality. We will also explore how immigrations continues to (re)shape race and ethnic relations writ large. While the course’s main focus is to examine how the study of race and ethnicity has evolved in the United States, readings on other countries will also be drawn on to illuminate how different institutional environments give rise to specific understandings of race and ethnicity. This class will also bring a critical lens to the field of sociology, and the ways in which race has played a defining role in the discipline over time.