Mar 28, 2024  
Summer Record 2008 
    
Summer Record 2008 [ARCHIVED RECORD]

SOC 306 - Sociological Perspectives on Whiteness


An explicit yet nascent interest in whiteness goes at least as far back as the work of James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and W.E.B. Du Bois’ essay “The Souls of White Folk” in Darkwater (1920). The more recent genealogy of whiteness studies can be traced to the work of contemporary cultural critics like bell hooks, Cornel West, and Stuart Hall. However, the “field” of whiteness studies is generally recognized as being introduced by Richard Dyer’s essay “White” (1988) in the British film journal Screen. That essay, according to black cultural studies theorists Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer, “inaugurate[d] a paradigmatic shift [by] precisely registering the re-orientation of ethnicity” called for by Stuart Hall. Accordingly, this course investigates the social construction of race through an exploration of whiteness. How has whiteness been defined in relation to notions of color and race? What is a white identity? How is whiteness understood from a non-white perspective? What does it mean to be an “ethnic” white? How have definitions of whiteness changed over time? We will examine whiteness in relation to race, ethnicity, class, gender, and nation, paying special attention to how whiteness is negotiated in politics and popular culture. This is an upper-level seminar designed for students who already have a background in Ethnic and Racial Studies. Assignments include active participation in discussion and a research paper of 20 pages.

Credits: 3