Race and the Making of American Culture 4219-SC073

This course focuses on the history of cultural appropriations of “racial” difference in America. Tracing the development of “race” in popular culture, it looks at strategies of racism, both overt and covert, to highlight the social effects of cultural exploitation of “racial” distinctions. The course begins by tracing the origins of "race" and its location in the history of modernity. It then discusses the meaning of "race" at the birth of the new American nation, including the emergence of American "racial" slavery, and the paradoxes of emancipation. In the second half of the semester, the course looks at a selection of cultural texts - literary and cinematic as well as social - that exemplify and develop American perspectives on "race" after 1865.

Among the major subjects addressed within the course are:

1) The invention of "race" in the colonial era

2) American slavery and abolitionism

3) The curious logic of Jim Crow

4) The evolution of "race" during the Civil Rights-Black Power era

We will search for answers to the following questions:

- Is "race" really about physical differences between people?

- Does being anti-slavery automatically make you anti-racist?

- Why did Martin Luther King only dream about "racial" equality in 1963 if slavery was abolished in 1863?