Race and Violence

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Departing from Michel Foucault's controversial theory of "race war", this class will examine the historical relations between the idea of race and material practices of violence. To do this we will focus on a selection of "debates about race" from across the Americas that in many ways define American modernity. These might include: Las Casas and Sepúlveda on the humanity of indigenous Americans; slavery and the formation of American nation-states; nineteenth-century race science, eugenics, and their rejection; the race-and-culture debates (e.g. Boas, Dubois, Freyre, against the race scientists); the so-called "problema indígena" debates in Latin America; race and rights struggles in the post-WWII era; immigration and migrant labor; Negro Sim (Brazil), Black Lives Matter (USA), and related protest movements worldwide; social media and the consolidation of white supremacist paramilitarism. Which selection of these topics we pursue will be guided by student interest. Language of instruction is Spanish and English. Comparative work is encouraged. This course can count for the Modern Latin-American area requirement for Spanish Major/Supplementary Major.