Sustainability

In the second half of the Twentieth Century, theorists across the academy concluded that racial and ethnic identities were not given but constructed within a horizon constituted by history, culture, political exchange, racialization, and rhetorical performance. The U.S. civil rights movement, anti- colonial revolutions in India, Africa, and Asia, and the cultural transformations of the 1960s and `70s produced a rich and deep secondary literature that now resides at the intersection of identity, culture, power, violence, and politics. Today, political and cultural events have reinvigorated the study of race and the discursive processes of racialization. The elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, increased media coverage of anti-Black violence, refugee crises in Europe and immigration debates in the United States, the catalytic protests of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, and presidential condemnations of critical race theory have led scholars and citizens to reflect on what race means for public life for the Twenty-first Century.

This seminar provides a graduate level introduction to the theories and issues that surround the study of race, ethnicity, multiculturalism, and politics. While no single course can do justice to a subject this complex, this seminar exposes students to the most important ideas and scholarship that comprise 40 years of race theory and its application to public rhetoric.