[ Wesleyan Home Page ] [ WesMaps Home Page ] [ WesMaps Archive ] [ Course Search ] [ Course Search by CID ]
Academic Year 2000/2001

Sophomore Seminar: Race and Nation
HIST 265 SP

This seminar will examine the links between nationalist ideologies and beliefs about race and race hierarchy. Although our main focus will be on the late 19th- and early 20th-century United States, we will draw comparative examples from other areas and time periods. In particular, we will examine the ways race and nation are configured in political culture (rhetoric, ritual and festival), literary texts (novels, scholarship and the popular press), and performances (minstrel shows, vaudeville, circus and early film). Topics will include United States imperial expansion and the belief in Manifest Destiny, Chinese and Japanese immigration, colonization of the Phillipines and Puerto Rico, the rise of Anglo-Saxonism, and political disenfranchisement.

MAJOR READINGS

Partial reading list: Benedict Anderson, IMAGINED COMMUNITIES Frantz Panon, BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS Philip Bryan Harper, ARE WE NOT MEN? Paul Gilroy, THE BLACK ATLANTIC Rudyard Kipling, KIM Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins, READING NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Toni Morrison, PLAYING IN THE DARK George W. Stocking, VICTORIAN ANTHROPOLOGY

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Four to six short writing assignments.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.

COURSE FORMAT: Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS HIST    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-26-2001

Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email

Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459