The Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture

CRES 30001. Topics in African American History. 100 Units.

This course is designed to explore in-depth selected topics in African American history and historiography. The specific focus this term will be "race and twentieth-century social science." Readings and discussion will explore the history of the relation between social-science theory and racial thought and practice from the race science of the late-nineteenth century through Franz Boas's cultural relativism to mid-twentieth century notions of a so-called culture of poverty. Our attention will focus on the real-world, especially public policy, implications of social-scientific thought. In addition to active participation in class discussions each student will write a final paper on a selected topic.

Equivalent Course(s): HIST 40001

CRES 30110. Trans-Saharan Africa. 100 Units.

Should Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa be treated as one or two historical units? What was the global and regional significance of medieval and early modern trans-Saharan caravan trade? How are we to understand the vast empires that sprang up in the West and Central Sudan during this era? How and in what form did Islam and the broader culture that accompanied it spread across this entire region? What was the role of slavery in the economic and cultural development of both North and West-West Central Africa? To what extent did European colonial rule and its aftermath alter or encourage the social and cultural processes initiated by trans-Saharan contacts? We will consider these questions in this course, which will mix lectures on Tuesdays with discussion of readings on Thursdays. Assignments: Two short 3-5-page critical papers on specialized readings and one longer final essay of 10-12 pages.

Instructor(s): R. Austen     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 20110, HIST 30110, HIST 20110

CRES 30203. Colloquium: Colonial African History. 100 Units.

In the late nineteenth century, European nations embarked on an ambitious effort to conquer and occupy Africa. This course considers the conditions that enabled the European "scramble for Africa" and the long-lasting consequences of that project. We will use primary sources, secondary texts, fiction, and films to explore the meanings and manifestations of the European occupation for African peoples. Specific themes to be investigated include colonial institutions and systems of rule; social and political effects of colonialism; colonial religious movements; resistance and rebellion; nationalism and independence. We will draw case studies from French West Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and South Africa.

Instructor(s): E. Osborn     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Upper-level undergraduates with consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 40203

CRES 30235. Democracy, Race and Equal Protection. 100 Units.

In this course, students explore the relationship between democratic governance and the equal protection of the law from several disciplinary perspectives. The primary focus is on integrating dominant legal understandings of equal protection, on one hand, with influential theories of democratic legitimacy, on the other. As such, students encounter key case law, court opinions and commentary from leading legal scholars. They also engage with foundational texts in democratic theory, the sociology of law and organizations, and legal anthropology. Many of these readings will focus primarily on racially unequal protections under the criminal law. This is because criminal prosecution has been intimately tied to racial discrimination and white supremacist violence throughout the history of the United States. Now, debate is fierce around how police and prosecutors fail to protect the lives of Black people. This seminar invites students to join this debate using a variety of theoretical tools and methodological approaches.

Instructor(s): Bourne, Kyla     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): SOCI 30335, MAPS 30235, PLSC 21011, HMRT 30235

CRES 30308. Political Theologies of Slavery and Freedom in the Atlantic World. 100 Units.

This seminar examines the interdisciplinary form of knowledge known as "political theology" in the context of Atlantic slavery. The course will trace two major developments. First, we will explore how Christian metaphysics facilitated colonialism and slavery, focusing on the emergence of race as a theological (rather than a biological) concept and on the self-fulfilling providentialism that structured fantasies of Euro-Christian world dominance. Second, we will explore how indigenous and African cosmologies and Christianities informed enslaved resistance and abolitionism. Our readings will range from works of political theology (Augustine, Calvin, Hobbes) to early American writings (Las Casas, Ligon, Jefferson) to Black Atlantic anti-slavery texts (Wheatley, Walker, Turner). We'll consider the explorer George Best's rewriting of the biblical Curse of Ham, Francis Bacon's claim that Europe's superior technology evidenced its Chosen status, and the ideology of "hereditary heathenism" that forestalled early efforts to convert slaves to Christianity. Likewise, we'll consider the role of obeah in the Haitian Revolution, the competing attitudes toward Christian slave revolt found in fiction by Douglass and Stowe, and the continued contestation of what W. E. B. Du Bois called "the new religion of whiteness." Secondary authors may include Charles Taylor, Talal Asad, Max Weber, Colin Kidd, Rebecca Goetz, Jared Hickman, Katharine Gerbner, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, and J. Kameron Carter

Instructor(s): Alex Mazzaferro     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CHSS 40308, KNOW 40308, SCTH 40308

CRES 31008. The Philosophy of Civic Engagement. 100 Units.

What is "civic engagement" and why should colleges, universities, and other educational institutions practice and encourage it? How, for example, does the University of Chicago's Office of Civic Engagement define the theory and practice of civic engagement, fitting it within the University's core mission and valorizing certain approaches to it for students, faculty, staff, and the University as a whole? What alternative models might be available? And what are the limitations of such institutionalized efforts, as highlighted in efforts to "decolonize" institutions of higher education? When, in short, does such institutionalized civic engagement conflict with efforts to move beyond the discourses of diversity and civic education to embrace more critical perspectives on the settler colonial ideologies informing educational institutions in current neoliberal societies? This course will be developed in active collaboration with the UChicago Civic Knowledge Project, which for two decades has explored alternatives visions of civic friendship on Chicago's South Side. (A) (I) (IV)

Instructor(s): B. Schultz     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): PHIL 21008, PHIL 31008, CRES 21008

CRES 31900. ¿Cuerpos Desechables? Estéticas de la No-Vida en las Literaturas Hispanoamericanas. 100 Units.

In this seminar we will conduct a theoretical exploration of the aesthetic procedures through which human life has been represented as expendable in Spanish-American literature from the Conquest to the twenty-first century, as well as an examination of the historical and philosophical contexts within which such figurations emerged. The course will focus on case studies that correspond to four key moments in the history of the region: conquest and colonization, slavery and the formation of national states in the nineteenth century, the triumph of a capitalist export economy at the turn of the twentieth, and the violent challenges posed by globalization and narcotráfico in the contemporary context. Among the issues and texts we may engage are Fray Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria's sixteenth-century dispute on the right of conquest and the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, Esteban Echevarría's El matadero, Lucio Mansilla's Una excursión a los indios ranqueles, Juan F. Manzano's Autobiografía de un esclavo, Manuel Zeno Gandía's La charca, and Fernando Vallejo's La virgen de los sicarios.

Instructor(s): A. Lugo-Ortiz     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 31900, HMRT 31901, LACS 31900

CRES 32012. Technologies of Race Making. 100 Units.

This course considers the intersections between technology, science, and race. It explores how technologies have been developed and used to assign racial meaning to people's identities and bodies and how this has impacted economic, political, and social power structures. We will read studies relating to historical and present-day technologies and discuss topics such as racial science, phrenology, biometry, surveillance and policing, artificial intelligence and automation, and data production and reuse. A major theme that runs through the course is the practice of race-making, how biological race is enacted and made relevant in specific technological practices. Which assumptions and expectations about human variation are built into the technologies? What are the effects of its use in practice? How does race making configure into more durable forms, such as standards, databanks, and protocols? This class will be bi-modal, with in class and online options.

Instructor(s): Iris Clever     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 32012, ANTH 33336, KNOW 22012, HIPS 22102, CHSS 32012, SOCI 30325

CRES 33275. Justice: Race, Digital Media, & Human Rights Activism. 100 Units.

How have digital media platforms influenced and motivated recent developments in human rights activism? Can literature, art, and film contribute to political debate and systemic change as much as on-the-ground protest? In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will explore a variety of ways that grassroots activists, writers, artists, and filmmakers have made inventive use of digital media to aid in political struggles for refugee rights, gender equality, environmental justice, police abolition, data protection and privacy, and an economy founded on fair labor practices. We will be especially attuned to how their practices advocate for communities of color and other marginalized groups, who are disproportionately impacted by regimes of surveillance, state violence, and capitalist expansion. In addition to resources and tools created by digital transparency activists, we will examine how cultural practitioners make political interventions and claims with literature, art, media, and other nontraditional forms of engagement. These cultural case studies will include films produced with iPhones and drones that document the global refugee crisis, digital poems concerning discrimination against immigrants, new media art installations that critique algorithm-driven predictive policing, and border-crossing robotic sculptures, among others.

Instructor(s): Maria A. Dikcis, Pozen Center for Human Rights, ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow      Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MAAD 13275, HMRT 23275, HMRT 33275, CRES 23275

CRES 33700. Capitalism, Colonialism, and Nationalism in the Pacific. 100 Units.

This course compares colonial capitalist projects and their dialogic transfor­mations up to present political dilemmas, with special attention to Fiji, New Zealand, and Hawai'i, and a focus on the labor diaspora, the fates of indigenous polities, and tensions in contemporary citizenship. We will compare Wakefield's "scientific colonization" in New Zealand, Gordon's social experiments and indentured labor in Fiji, and the plantations, American annexation, tourism, and the military in Hawai'i. We will compare the colonial experiences of the Maori, Hawaiians, and indigenous Fijians, and also those of the immigrant laborers and their descendants, especially white New Zealanders, the South Asians in Fiji, and the Japanese in Hawai'i. General pro­positions about nationalism, capitalism "late" and otherwise, global cultural flows, and postcolonial subject positions will be juxtaposed with contemporary Pacific conflicts.

Instructor(s): John Kelly     Terms Offered: May be offered in 2021-22.
Note(s): This course qualifies as a Discovering Anthropology selection for Anthropology majors.
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 23710, ANTH 33700, ANTH 23700

CRES 35113. From Mestizaje to the Mexican Genome. 100 Units.

As the Kingdom of New Spain became independent Mexico, how did a society structured around status, caste and corporate bodies imagine itself as a republic of equal citizens? This course will explore the categories of class, culture and, particularly, race, with which, for over two hundred years, Mexican politicians and public writers, scientists and intellectuals have sought to make sense of the nation, decipher its ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity, assuage the profound inequalities that have riddled it, and forge a "national identity".

Equivalent Course(s): LACS 35113, HIST 26124, HIST 36124, LACS 25113, CRES 25113

CRES 36220. Witches, Sinners, and Saints. 100 Units.

This course examines representations of women's bodies and sexualities in early modern Iberian and colonial Latin American writings. We will study the body through a variety of lenses: the anatomical body as a site of construction of sexual difference, the witch's body as a site of sexual excess, the mystic's body as a double of the possessed body, the tortured body as a site of knowledge production, and the racialized bodies of women as sites to govern sexuality, spirituality, labor, and property in the reaches of the Spanish Empire.

Instructor(s): Larissa Brewer-García     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): For undergrads: SPAN 20300 or consent of instructor.
Note(s): Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 26212, SPAN 36210, SPAN 26210, GNSE 26210, GNSE 36210, CRES 26220, LACS 36212

CRES 36290. Mapping Black Social Dance: Hip Hop and House in the Community and Onstage. 100 Units.

This hybrid studio/seminar course offers an overview of the formal techniques, cultural contexts, and social trends that shape current Black social and vernacular dance practices. Modules will be built around Black social culture by looking at key histories and theories around Black dance, music and other cultural aesthetics from hip hop to house. As part of our exploration, we will cover themes such as: the Great Migration, the range of Black social dance forms from blues, jazz, disco, and dancehall that have influenced the evolution of hip hop and house on global scale; and the spectrum of social spaces from clubs to lounges and public events that have been critical to preserving Black cultural heritage and creating safe spaces for belonging and flourishing. Selected readings and viewings will supplement movement practice to give historical, cultural, and political context.

Instructor(s): M. McNeal     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 26290, MUSI 23620, CRES 26290, MUSI 33620, TAPS 36290

CRES 37110. Égalité des races dans la francophonie. 100 Units.

La réflexion anthropologie sur la Caraïbe commence avec les premières explorations européennes au cours des 15e et 16e siècles. Tout comme lors du développement de la colonisation, puis du système esclavagiste inauguré par le Code Noir (1685), la question raciale s'instaure au cœur même de la revendication républicaine des esclaves et de l'indépendance haïtienne. C'est cependant au milieu du 19e siècle, période où triomphe l'anthropologie positive, que paraîtront deux ouvrages majeurs sur la question raciale: De l'inégalité des races (1853) de Gobineau et De l'égalité des races humaines (1885) d'Anténor Firmin, l'un des premiers noirs à être membre de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris. Le séminaire analysera ces deux ouvrages en rapport avec l'esprit et l'histoire des idées de l'époque en mettant en évidence, à travers les réflexions théoriques et les œuvres des Durkheim, Firmin, Gobineau, Hibbert, Joseph-Janvier, Madiou, Marcelin, Moreau de Saint-Méry, Renan, Saint-Rémy, Schœlcher, l'émergence croisée et progressive d'un formidable discours sur la race dans l'histoire, la littérature et la philosophie politique, tout au long de la deuxième moitié du 19e siècle.

Equivalent Course(s): CRES 27100, FREN 27100, FREN 37100

CRES 37200. African American History to 1883. 100 Units.

A lecture course discussing selected topics in the African American experience (economic, political, social) from African origins through the Supreme Court decision invalidating Reconstruction Era protections of African American civil rights. Course evaluations via online quizzes and take-home essays.

Instructor(s): T. Holt     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 37200, LLSO 26901, HIST 27200, CRES 27200

CRES 37207. The North American West, 1500 - 1900. 100 Units.

Go west, young man, go west!" newspaper editor Horace Greeley allegedly proclaimed. Although he only visited the region himself, his proclamation referred to the host of opportunities thought to be lying in wait among the uncharted territories out yonder. The West has embodied both the American dream and an American nightmare. This co-taught class will examine the changing delineations, demographics, conceptualizations, and significance of the North American West across four centuries and several empires.

Equivalent Course(s): HIST 27207, HIST 37207, CRES 27207, GNSE 37207, AMER 37207, GNSE 27207, AMER 27207

CRES 37300. African American History since 1883. 100 Units.

A lecture course discussing selected topics in the African American experience (economic, political, social) from Reconstruction Era protections of African American civil rights through social and political movements in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries seeking their restoration. Course evaluations via online quizzes and take-home essays.

Instructor(s): T. Holt     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 27300, LLSO 28800, HIST 37300, HIST 27300

CRES 37401. Literaturas del Caribe Hispanico en el siglo XX. 100 Units.

En este curso se estudiarán algunos ejemplos salientes de las literaturas producidas en el Caribe hispánico insular (Cuba, Puerto Rico y Santo Domingo) durante el siglo XX y a principios del XXI. Entre los asuntos a discutir tendrán un lugar principal los modos en que esta producción se ha constituído como respuesta y elaboración estética de las historias de esclavitud, violencia racial y colonialismo, de militarización y desplazamientos territoriales migratorios, que han marcado a la región en su carácter de frontera imperial desde el siglo XVI. En el curso también se abordará la condición simbólica del Caribe como espacio de utopías y catástrofes, escenario previlegiado tanto de las aspiraciones revolucionarias propias de la modernidad (e.g. la Revolución Haitiana del 1791 y la Revolución Cubana del 1959) como de los terrores de la destrucción ecológica (con su experiencia cruel de huracanes y terremotos).

Instructor(s): A. Lugo-Ortiz     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): At least one of the following courses: SPAN 21500, 21703, 21803, 21903, or 22003.
Note(s): Taught in Spanish.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 37401, LACS 27401, CRES 27401, SPAN 37401, SPAN 27401

CRES 37403. African American Lives and Times. 100 Units.

This colloquium will examine selected topics and issues in African American history during a dynamic and critical decade, 1893 and 1903, that witnessed the redefinition of American national and sectional identities, social and labor relations, and race and gender relations. A principal premise of the course is that African American life and work was at the nexus of the birth of modern America, as reflected in labor and consumption, in transnational relations (especially Africa), in cultural expression (especially music and literature), and in the resistance or contestation to many of these developments. The course will focus on the Chicago World's Fair and the publication of Du Bois's Souls of Black Folk as seminal moments in the era. Our discussions will be framed by diverse primary materials, including visual and aural sources, juxtaposed with interpretations of the era by various historians. A principal goal of the course is that students gain a greater appreciation for interpreting historical processes through in-depth examination of the complex and multiple currents of an defined era-a slice of time-as well as skills in interpreting diverse primary sources.

Instructor(s): T. Holt     Terms Offered: Winter

CRES 37550. Black Power and Jews, Black Power and Palestine. 100 Units.

This course focuses on how several movements with goals of a more liberated future negotiated mutual recognition and were inspired by each other. Mainly, we'll look at the influence the Black Power Movement and women of color feminism in the U.S. had on Middle Eastern Jewish struggles against racism in Israel and Palestinian struggles against Israeli occupation. Looking at Black Power's influence on Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians will also necessitate explorations into shared organizing among U.S. based efforts to combat racism and anti-semitism. Our examination of these influences and intersectional organizing will focus not only on when solidarity seemed productive, but when it seemed limited or difficult, often due to presentist concerns. A major goal of the course is for the liberated future these anti-discriminatory movements were and are working towards to be thought of as possible. To this end, by the end of the course students will be able to understand the motivations for solidarity efforts among black, Jewish, and Palestinian activists, recognize what factors have historically disrupted these efforts, and by extension use this knowledge to feel hopeful about the shared struggle of these movements. While reading and analyzing historical and theoretical articles, memoirs, podcasts, and op-eds, the course will also include instruction on and practice of writing visionary fiction and op-eds.

Instructor(s): Chelsie May     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 27550, GNSE 27550, CRES 27550, JWSC 26610

CRES 37709. Soul and the Black Seventies. 100 Units.

This course considers in what ways soul as cultural genre and style shaped, and was shaped by, the political, social, structural, cultural, and ethical shifts and conditions associated with the 1970s. It will focus on popular music as both symbolic field and system of production, while also taking up other forms of expression-literary, intellectual, institutional, activist-in order to propose an alternate, and compelling, archive for this era. The course intends to deepen understanding of the feel and meaning of soul by relating it to consequential legacies of the 1970s: urban identity and crisis, emerging limitations of racial reformism, the deepening class stratification of Black life, and the radical disruption of social norms through feminism, in particular Black feminism.

Instructor(s): A. Green     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Graduate students by consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 27709, CRES 27709, GNSE 37709, MUSI 27709, HIST 37709, MUSI 37709, HIST 27709

CRES 38000. United States Latinos: Origins and Histories. 100 Units.

An examination of the diverse social, economic, political, and cultural histories of those who are now commonly identified as Latinos in the United States. Particular emphasis will be placed on the formative historical experiences of Mexican Americans and mainland Puerto Ricans, although some consideration will also be given to the histories of other Latino groups, i.e., Cubans, Central Americans, and Dominicans. Topics include cultural and geographic origins and ties; imperialism and colonization; the economics of migration and employment; legal status; work, women, and the family; racism and other forms of discrimination; the politics of national identity; language and popular culture; and the place of Latinos in US society. Equivalent Course(s): AMER 28001,CRES 28000,GNSE 28202,HIST 38000,LACS 28000,LACS 38000,CRES 38000,GNSE 38202,AMER 38001

Instructor(s): R. Gutiérrez     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 28000, HIST 38000, GNSE 28202, AMER 28001, AMER 38001, CRES 28000, LACS 28000, LACS 38000, GNSE 38202

CRES 38703. Baseball and American Culture, 1840-1970. 100 Units.

This course will examine the rise and fall of baseball as America's national pastime. We will trace the relationship between baseball and American society from the development of the game in the mid-nineteenth century to its enormous popularity in the first half of the twentieth century to its more recent problems and declining status in our culture. The focus will be on baseball as a professional sport, with more attention devoted to the early history of the game rather than to the recent era. Emphasis will be on using baseball as a historical lens through which we will analyze the development of American society and culture rather than on the celebration of individuals or teams. Crucial elements of racialization, ethnicity, class, gender, nationalism, and masculinity will be in play as we consider the Negro Leagues, women's leagues, the Latinization and globalization of the game, and more.

Instructor(s): M. Briones     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 28703, HIST 38703, CRES 28703

CRES 38906. Nineteenth-Century American Mass Entertainment. 100 Units.

Popular culture filters, reflects, and occasionally refracts many of the central values, prejudices, and preoccupations of a given society. From the Industrial Revolution to the advent of feature films in the early twentieth century, American audiences sought both entertainment and reassurance from performers, daredevils, amusement parks, lecturers, magicians, panoramas, athletes, and photographers. Amidst the Civil War, they paid for portraits that purportedly revealed the ghosts of lost loved ones; in an age of imperialism, they forked over hard-earned cash to relive the glories of western settlement, adventure, and conquest in Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Mass entertainment not only echoed the central events of the age it helped shape them: from phrenology as the channel for antebellum convictions about outward appearance (and racial identity), to the race riots following Jack Johnson's boxing victory over Jim Jeffries. Many of these entertainment forms became economic juggernauts in their own right, and in the process of achieving unprecedented popularity, they also shaped collective memory, gender roles, race relations, and the public's sense of acceptable beliefs and behaviors. This lecture course will examine the history of modern American entertainment over the course of the long nineteenth century. Requirements include careful reading, active and thoughtful participation, and written assignments.

Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 38906, CRES 28906, GNSE 28906, HIST 28906, HIST 38906

CRES 39000. Latin American Religions, New and Old. 100 Units.

This course will consider select pre-twentieth-century issues, such as the transformations of Christianity in colonial society and the Catholic Church as a state institution. It will emphasize twentieth-century developments: religious rebellions; conversion to evangelical Protestant churches; Afro-diasporan religions; reformist and revolutionary Catholicism; new and New Age religions.

Instructor(s): D. Borges     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CRES 29000, LACS 39000, HCHR 39200, HIST 29000, LACS 29000, RLST 21401, MAPS 39200, HIST 39000

CRES 39519. Histories of Racial Capitalism. 100 Units.

This course takes as its starting point the insistence that the movement, settlement, and hierarchical arrangements of people of African descent is inseparable from regimes of capital accumulation. It builds on the concept of "racial capitalism," which rejects treatments of race as external to a purely economic project and counters the idea that racism is an externality, cultural overflow, or aberration from the so-called real workings of capitalism. With a focus on the African diaspora, this course will cover topics such as racial slavery, labor in Jamaica, banking in the Caribbean, black capitalism in Miami, the under development of Africa, mass incarceration, and the contemporary demand for racial reparations.

Equivalent Course(s): HIST 39519, CRES 29519, HIST 29519

CRES 40110. Color, Ethnicity, Cultural Context, and Human Vulnerability. 100 Units.

The specific level of vulnerability may vary across the life course; nevertheless, all humans are vulnerable and, thus, unavoidably possess both risks and protective factors. The level and character of human vulnerability matters and has implications for physical health, psychological well being, the character of culture, and mental health status. The balance between the two (i.e., risks and protective factors) can be influenced by ethnic group membership and identifiability (e.g., skin color). The cultural contexts where growth and development take place play a significant role in life course human development. As a globally admired cultural context with a particular national identity, one of America's foundational tenets is that citizenship promises the privilege of freedom, allows access to social benefits, and holds sacred the defense of rights. Our centuries-old cultural context and national identity as a liberty-guaranteeing democracy also presents challenges. The implied identity frequently makes it difficult to acknowledge that the depth of experience and its determinative nature may be but skin deep. In America, there continues to be an uneasiness and palpable personal discomfort whenever discussions concerning ethnic diversity, race, color, and the Constitutional promise and actual practice of equal opportunity occur. Other nations are populated with vulnerable humans, as well, and experience parallel dissonance concerning the social tolerance of human diversity. Given the shared status of human vulnerability, the course unpacks and analyzes how differences in ethnicity, skin color, and other indicators of group membership impact vulnerability and opportunity for diverse groups. Specifically, the course analyzes the balance between risk level and protective factor presence and examines the consequent physical health status, psychological well-being, and mental health outcomes for its dissimilar citizens. The course especially emphasizes the American cultural context but, in addition, highlights the unique experiences of ethnically varied individuals developing in multiple cultural contexts around the globe.

Instructor(s): M. Spencer     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Undergraduates require permission from instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): CHDV 40110

CRES 40141. Structural -isms. 100 Units.

What does it mean to designate "structure" as the operative force in discrimination against categories of person-as in appeals to structural racism or structural violence on the basis of gender? And how can we approach this question by attending to aesthetic uses of structure and form, especially as these have been understood in such paradigms as structuralism and recent literary formalisms? How do we read for structure, in reading for racism and for systemic discrimination on other bases? We'll focus on intersections of race, gender, and class (in U.S. contexts) as these categories have been reconfigured in the past half century or so. To explore appeals to structure, we'll consider definitions of literary and aesthetic form, debates about structure vs. agency, and questions of individual and collective action as mediated by institutions. Readings will balance theory with examples drawn from fiction, documentary film, built form, and other media. Throughout, we'll pay particular attention to problems of structure construed as problems of narrative, as we develop sharper terms for understanding how discrimination proceeds structurally.

Instructor(s): Rowan Bayne     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Instructor consent required for undergraduates.
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 25141, MAPH 40141, CRES 22141, ENGL 40141, GNSE 45141, ENGL 20242

CRES 40161. 21st Century Ethnic American Literature. 100 Units.

This class will read US novels and short stories by African-American, American Indian, Asian-American, and Latinx writers from the last twenty years to conceptualize the shifting categories of race and ethnicity, paired with critical and theoretical works in critical cultural race studies. (20th/21st)

Instructor(s): Megan Tusler     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): MAPH 40161, ENGL 40161, CRES 22161, ENGL 20161, AMER 40161

CRES 40204. A Proto-History of Race? Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in Spain and North Africa (1200-1600) 100 Units.

This course focuses on phenomena of mass conversion and the emergence of ideologies of lineage and purity of blood in the western Mediterranean, more specifically, the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb. The rivalry between Islam and Christianity (with Judaism a frequent go-between) in this region produced many distinctive cultural formations. Among those formations were ideas about the limits of conversion that may be compared to modern concepts of race. The word "race" was itself first applied to humans in Iberia during this period, to designate Christians descended from Muslims or Jews, and similar concepts emerged in Islamic North Africa. We will explore these ideas in the Christian Iberian kingdoms, with frequent excursions into Almoravid, Almohad, Marinid and Nasrid Islamic polities. Our goal will be to produce a Mediterranean archaeology of some of the concepts with which Christian and Muslim colonizers encountered the New World and sub-Saharan Africa in the sixteenth century.

Instructor(s): David Nirenberg     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Spanish reading proficiency recommended, but not required.
Note(s): This course counts as a history graduate colloquium.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 40204, HCHR 40204, SCTH 40204, HIJD 40204, HIST 60904, ISLM 40204

CRES 40304. Between Nature and Artifice: The Formation of Scientific Knowledge. 100 Units.

This course critically examines concepts of "nature" and "artifice" in the formation of scientific knowledge, from the Babylonians to the Romantics, and the ways that this history has been written and problematized by both canonical and less canonical works in the history of science from the twentieth century to the present. Our course is guided by three overarching questions, approached with historical texts and historiography, that correspond to three modules of investigation: 1) Nature, 2) Artifice, and 3) Liminal: Neither Natural nor Artificial.

Instructor(s): Margaret Carlyle, Eduardo Escobar, Jennifer P. Daly     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): This course fulfills part of the KNOW Core Seminar requirement to be eligible to apply for the SIFK Dissertation Research Fellowship. Ph.D. students must register with the KNOW 40304 course number in order for this course to meet the requirement.
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 40304, GNSE 40304, HIST 34920, CHSS 40304, HIPS 40304

CRES 40311. The Invention of Hunger. 100 Units.

Hunger is often thought of as an unchanging biological fact, but what it means to be hungry has changed profoundly over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the pleasure of sweets to the trauma of famine, hunger has influenced some of the most important economic, political, and cultural developments of the modern age. Drawing from a variety of scholarly disciplines, as well as primary readings including novels, scientific texts, and journalism, we will explore how experiences and understandings of hunger were intertwined with race, class, and gender, and played a pivotal role in the development of the slave trade, colonialism, and humanitarian ethics. We will situate famines, hunger strikes, eating disorders, and other ways of thinking about food in their historical and cultural contexts. We will end the course by examining how this history has influenced how we understand the culture and economics of food in our own society. For each class period, students will write a 1-2 page reflection on one or several of the week's readings that they will circulate to the entire class at least 24 hours before seminar. There will be a 15-20 page final paper on the theme of hunger, broadly defined. This paper will incorporate outside secondary works related to students' specific research interests.

Instructor(s): Yan Slobodkin     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): KNOW 40311

CRES 40315. Black Fugitivity & Fugitive Democracy Radical Democratic Theory and Race. 100 Units.

What does "fugitivity" mean as a concept? As a trope, what kind of rhetorical and political work is it being used to perform by scholars across the humanities and social sciences? How should we assess its appeal, value, limitations, and dangers? This seminar pursues these broad questions by comparing figurations of fugitivity in Black Studies and political theory, specifically in works of Black Study by Hortense Spillers, Fred Moten, and Saidiyah Hartman, and in works of political theory by Sheldon Wolin and Hannah Arendt. In these texts fugitivity gains its meanings by juxtaposing social death and impasse to insurgent movement, creative natality, and aliveness, but theorists represent the meaning, location, protagonists, and characteristic practices of fugitivity differently. Our goal is to discern the stakes in these differences about sociality, maternity, Blackness, and the "grammar" of the democratic and the political. Additional reading includes Neil Roberts' Freedom as Marronage, Christina Sharpe's In the Wake, and recent political theory on the relation between "fugitive democracy" and "Black fugitivity" as well as Toni Morrison's Paradise and Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, literary fiction as a form of political theory by reading.

Instructor(s): George Shulman     Terms Offered: TBD
Equivalent Course(s): AMER 40315, PLSC 40315, KNOW 40315, GNSE 40315

CRES 42610. Theologies from the Underside of History. 100 Units.

This course compares and contrasts various systems and methods in contemporary Third World theologies, that is, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. As a backdrop for this critical comparative engagement, we will use the recent theological dialogues taking place in the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT). As we engage these systems of thought, we want to examine the logic of their theologies and the sources used to construct theology.

Equivalent Course(s): THEO 42610

CRES 44000. Cultura visual y esclavitud en Iberoamérica. 100 Units.

La esclavitud en las Américas no fue únicamente un sistema de organización socio-económica fundamentado en el trabajo coactivo. Este también conllevó la gestación de complejas y heterogéneas formas de producción cultural. En el contexto del moderno sistema de la plantación, ello en parte implicó una inédita articulación filosófica de las relaciones entre poder, raza y cuerpo, sofisticadas formas sincréticas de musicalidad y religiosidad populares, así como la producción de numerosas representaciones artísticas en las que se simbolizaron las conflictivas y a veces insólitas relaciones entre amos y esclavos. En este seminario nos enfocaremos en una serie de artefactos en los que se dramatiza puntualmente la intersección entre cultural visual y dominación esclavista en el mundo iberoamericano, prestándole especial atención a sus encuadres transatlánticos y a sus relaciones con los proyectos de constitución nacional en el siglo XIX. Nuestro objetivo es identificar el lugar de lo visual al interior de las cultura de la esclavitud --las lógicas de sus funcionamientos-- a partir del reconocimiento de algunas de sus zonas menos estudiadas. Examinaremos una selección de expresiones relativas a la "alta" pintura, las dimensiones visuales de los reglamentos de esclavos, ciertas modalidades performáticas de las prácticas evangélicas y del teatro popular, y la dialéctica de lo visible y lo invisible en narrativas de esclavos y en algunas producciones efímeras de la cultura material.

Instructor(s): Agnes Lugo-Ortiz     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Taught in Spanish. Open to advanced undergraduates with consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): SPAN 44000, CMLT 44000, LACS 44000

CRES 44502. Black Theology: Liberation or Reconciliation. 100 Units.

TBD

Equivalent Course(s): THEO 44502

CRES 45264. New Directions in Postcolonial Studies. 100 Units.

Postcolonial studies emerged as an influential sub-field in English departments in the metropolitan academy in the last decades of the twentieth century. This course is an attempt to identify and map the new directions that postcolonial studies appears to be currently moving into, a few decades on. Some of these shifts are clearly signaled, while others might be less perceptible. Even as it engages with new and urgent issues, adopts methods opened up by new technologies, and identifies fresh objects of study that promise greater relevance and staying power, postcolonial studies is also encountering challenges to its historical focus and its method as critique. We will focus on six key developments in the field: 1.

Instructor(s): Rajeswari Sunder Rajan     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 45264

CRES 45700. Race and Capitalism. 100 Units.

This course will address issues of race and capitalism.

Instructor(s): M. Dawson     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): PLSC 45710

CRES 45732. Prejudice and Discrimination: Individual Cost and Response. 100 Units.

This foundational diversity class explores the origins and practices of racial/ethnic prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination, and how demographic factors such as class, gender, sexuality, and nationality intersect to solidify and perpetuate inequality. We will explore the resulting psychological, economic, and sociopolitical tolls on individuals, and also examine various individual responses that can mitigate the negative impacts of or engage in resistance towards such discrimination (such as racial/ethnic identity development, deliberate retention of heritage culture, and social/political mobilization). Moreover, we will examine how these individual responses together with organized and collective efforts can bring about social changes. This class consciously expands a dominant binary discourse of race to develop a more inclusive and complex paradigm that accurately reflects the diversity of contemporary America.

Equivalent Course(s): SSAD 25732, SSAD 45732, CRES 25732

CRES 46751. Of Whiteness. 100 Units.

In his essay "The Souls of White Folk," WEB Du Bois asks, "But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?" This course will explore a multiethnic cultural and theoretical archive that grapples with the patterned and partial irrationality of this excessive racial desire. How does whiteness structure the racial/social field? What mechanisms regulate-or have regulated-populations' access to and desire for it? (18th/19th)

Instructor(s): Christopher Taylor     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 46751

CRES 49001. Colloquium: Slavery & Emancipations-Atlantic Histories. 100 Units.

This course explores political, economic, and cultural linkages among Europe, Africa, and the Americas, as they were fashioned and reconstructed through slavery and the slave trade, slave emancipations and post-emancipation labor regimes, post-abolition colonial projects and post-emancipation racial ideologies and anticolonial liberation movements. Toward the end of the twentieth century, academic historiography revived what in shorthand fashion is termed an "Atlantic world" as a frame of historical analysis. The premises of varying Atlantic frameworks will receive attention in order to explore ways to think historically about material, ideological, and symbolic connections fashioned by slavery and the slave trade and the refashioning of these relationships in a world whose inter-connections were increasingly not premised on the illegitimacy of laws and many practices of enslavement.

Instructor(s): J. Saville     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Graduate Students Only
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 69001, LACS 69001

CRES 50101. Contemporary Critical Theory: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics. 100 Units.

This graduate seminar introduces key debates in contemporary theory from a broad cross-section of disciplinary perspectives, fields, and cultural contexts. Adopting a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, we will explore critical models of aesthetics, ethics, and politics. These theories shape not only how we come to understand the nature of cultural objects (literature, film, art), but also the principles, methodologies, and ethical stakes of their analysis. Our seminar topics include: global Marxism; orientalism and anti-colonial discourse; (post)secularism; feminist and queer theory; embodiment and affect; as well as critical race theory. Engaging recent critical projects to "theorize from below," we will put foundational texts of the Euro-American canon into conversation with translated works of theory from the global south. In so doing, our seminar asks: What comes to count as theory and how do we account for alternative practices of knowledge production? Where does theory come from and what are the political economies that structure its circulation? Finally, what is the relationship of theory to embodiment, affect, and experience?

Instructor(s): Hoda El Shakry     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): This course fulfills the fall core requirement for first-year Ph.D. students in Comparative Literature.
Equivalent Course(s): MAPH 40101, ENGL 50101, GNSE 50102, CMLT 50101

CRES 50755. Race/Capital/Extraction. 100 Units.

In the concluding chapters of Capital, Vol. 1, Karl Marx describes the origins of capitalism as an enterprise "written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire." This process that Marx christened as "so-called primitive accumulation" rests fundamentally on the extraction of raw materials through colonial regimes of enclosure and the brutal exploitation of racialized labor. Nonetheless, the relationship between race and capital is not sufficiently elaborated in Marx's oeuvre. In turn, this course will reconsider Marxist concepts and categories through a critical evaluation of the analytical domains of "race," "capital," and "extraction." Moreover, students will consider the extent to which these domains productively modify each other: Does capitalism as an economic system depend on race as its ideological substrate? Can race be understood as an extractive project founded the violent enslavement and mercantile transit of racialized laboring subjects? How are the production of race and the accumulation of capital transformed by extractive economies of fossil fuels and metallic ores? To this end, students will consult the writings of Sylvia Wynter, W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones, Walter Rodney, and Octavia Butler. .

Instructor(s): Ryan Jobson     Terms Offered: Winter. Winter 2022
Equivalent Course(s): ANTH 50755, CHSS 50755

CRES 51515. An Island is a World: Readings in Caribbean Ethnography. 100 Units.

This advanced graduate seminar examines the construction of the Caribbean as an object of anthropological study. The aims of this seminar are twofold. Following Michel-Rolph Trouillot, this seminar will attend to "Caribbean as viewed by anthropologists, but also about anthropology as viewed from the Caribbean." In turn, students will consider whether the Caribbean is an exceptional or exemplary geography in the anthropological imagination.Accordingly, students will consult the writings of Trouillot, MG Smith, Constance Sutton, Lynn Bolles, and Deborah Thomas, among others. Additionally, students will be introduced to the Raymond T. Smith Papers in Special Collections at the Regenstein Library.

Instructor(s): Ryan Jobson     Terms Offered: Spring. Spring 2021
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 51515, ANTH 51515

CRES 52802. Politics of Intimacy. 100 Units.

This course draws from interdisciplinary debates to position intimate forms in relation to broader textures of emotion and ethics, desire and race, labor and liberation. Heuristically, intimacy allows us to attend to practices that spill beyond more dyadic understandings of ostensibly private domains of sexuality or kinship as opposed to public forms of economic production and labor. Course readings, taken primarily but not exclusively from the Latin American region, will consider specific instances when the gathering together of bodies in close quarters (e.g. in arrangements of domestic servitude, colonial-era monasteries and convents, indigenous slave-holding in the Americas, settler households and adoptive parentage configurations) became problematic and subject to governmental intervention. We will further ask how, in moments of colonial reform, post-colonial change, and de-colonial mobilization, intimate forms became newly offensive but also grounded (and continue to ground) emergent claims to life and rights. The course ends by meditating on the entailments of intimacy for ethnography, namely, as a model of research rooted in attachments and vulnerabilities rather than spectatorship and distance.

Instructor(s): Mareike Winchell     Terms Offered: Winter. Winter 2022
Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 52802, LACS 52802, ANTH 52802

CRES 54104. On Man: Sociogenesis and Subjectivation. 100 Units.

In this course, students will read and engage with how "Man" has been conceptualized and critiqued in certain areas of philosophy and critical theory. The class begins with Man's emergence in colonial contexts, with readings from Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, and Sylvia Wynter. Students will also contend with Man's intersubjectivity with the "Subject" with readings from Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Jose Munoz, and Hortense Spillers. Memoirs, novels, and auto-documentary films supplement this courses' exploration of the genealogies of "Man." (20th/21st)

Instructor(s): C. Riley Snorton     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 54104, GNSE 54104

CRES 61102. The L.A. Rebellion and the Politics of Black Cinema. 100 Units.

TBD

Equivalent Course(s): CMST 61102

CRES 62604. Visual Culture in American Life, 1800-1915. 100 Units.

How has American society's insatiable thirst for visual media influenced the way US citizens have viewed one another and portrayed themselves to others? In this course we will explore the significance of what Raymond Williams called the "cultural revolution" for the lives of ordinary men and women in the United States. This history encompasses subjects that have retained their relevance in contemporary life, including racial and ethnic stereotypes, armchair travel, virtual versus lived reality, authenticity and artifice, mass entertainment, city life, celebrity, and gender. Readings will include a series of theoretical works in combination with articles and monographs, to provide a broader underpinning for the problems of perception and historical analysis at play in this realm of scholarly thought and practice.

Instructor(s): A. Lippert     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 62604, AMER 62604, GNSE 62604

CRES 62805. Colloquium: American Conservatism, 1945-Present. 100 Units.

This course explores the burgeoning historiography of American conservatism, tracing the movement from its grassroots origins after World War II to its institutionalization and militarization in the Reagan era to the rise of evangelicalism and Tea Party politics. We will focus on the role of women in the movement, the ideological alliances in its founding, and the roles of particular conservative groups in the movement's history. This course will move both chronologically and thematically to explore fundamental questions about activism and radicalization, grassroots and top-down ideologies, and the impact of conservative thought and institutions upon American society and state in the late twentieth century.

Equivalent Course(s): GNSE 62805, AMER 62805, HIST 62805

CRES 67400. Colloquium: Settler Colonialism, History and Theory. 100 Units.

This course investigates the phenomenon of settler colonialism, a specific form of empire in which immigrant settlers seek to replicate their home societies through the expropriation of indigenous land and elimination of its population. The recent surge of scholarly interest in settler colonialism has not only revolutionized the study of settler societies in multiple geographic fields, but also established a theoretical scaffold for transnational and global indigenous studies. Yet settler colonial theory has some powerful detractors, and a lively debate about its formulations and the consequences of its application. This course will explore this burgeoning field by engaging with the theoretical literature and case studies that deploy the theory in a variety of contexts across the world. Its core focus will be the British and French empires, but texts will include settler-indigenous contexts including East Asia, South Africa, Australia, Hawai'i, and Palestine. Students are welcome to pursue research topics in any part of the Atlantic world.

Instructor(s): M. Kruer and L. Auslander     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructors; open to MA and PhD students only.
Equivalent Course(s): HIST 67400

CRES 69002. Colloquium: Slavery and Emancipations-Atlantic Histories. 100 Units.

This course explores political, economic, and cultural aspects of slave emancipations, emphasizing major transformations in Caribbean-Atlantic and North American slave systems since the first abolitionist measures of the mid-eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. The interpretive possibilities opened by varying comparative frameworks will be considered in order to explore ways to think historically about material, ideological, and symbolic connections fashioned by slavery and the slave trade and the refashioning of these relationships in a world whose interconnections were increasingly premised on the illegitimacy of laws and many of the practices of enslavement.

Equivalent Course(s): HIST 69002, LACS 69002