The Intellectual History of Race and Ethnicity

3 units

This course is designed to introduce students to a wide range of historical ideas, contexts, and texts that have shaped our understandings of race and ethnicity. We will examine the ways in which our definitions and categories of race and ethnicity have helped us to construct (and continuously reinvent) our sense of who counts as human, what counts as human behavior, the possibilities of artistic expression, the terms of political engagement, and our critical and analytical frameworks. Students should be prepared to do quite a bit of reading of some very challenging yet rewarding texts. This course satisfies the IPH major senior capstone course requirement normally listed as L93 450A.