The essay form has been one of the most important tools in articulating the dimensions of debate around race in the United States. This course studies a diverse number of contemporary writers who specialize in the essay form to contemplate the concept of race, its historical antecedents, and its contemporary ramifications. The course will focus specifically on the work of Richard Rodriguez, Derrick Bell, bell hooks, Patricia Williams, and Ishmael Reed, with other selected works by Justin Chin, Frank Chin, Eric Liu, Shelby Steele, and Janice Mirikitani. In addition to looking at these authors, we will ask how the literary form of the essay compares to alternative genres like the short story of novel as an effective venue for social critique.

Slavery remains one of the most controversial and explosive legacies of the American people. Starting from the assumption that slavery is a pivotal American cultural drama, the course examines the ramifications of American slavery, in discursive social and cultural frames. The course poses several questions: How has slavery influenced the relationship of immigrants to such categories as "whiteness" and "blackness"? What are the rhetorical dimensions of Black demands for reparations? How have slavery and the contradictions with the American project of liberty influenced our common history, as well as our collective understanding of ourselves as Americans?

Race and sexuality are inexorably linked in the American consciousness. Inflammatory stereotypes of sexual prowess, nymphomania, and moral and corporeal ruin have fueled distorted images of the sexuality of people of color in the USA, with a simultaneous attraction and repulsion on the part of all audiences. This course examines extreme examples of this phenomenon, specifically to take apart the performative nature of spectacle in mainstream, alternative, and resistant forms of representation in a historical and contemporary sense. Topics studied include the Mammy, the "tragic mulatto," camp and race, Blaxploitation, positive versus negative images, and insurgent critiques of mainstream ideas and representations of non-white sexualities. Different media will be examined, including film, video, literature, and the essay.

ANTH 201B Ethnography of Brazil

ANTH 249 Travel & Ethnography

ARTH 293 East Meets West

HIST 373 Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

JS 150 American Jewish Culture in 20^th Century

JS 210 History of the Holocaust

LIT 3902 Race, Gender & Modernism

MUS 211 Jazz in Literature I

PSY 235 Counseling Psychology

SOC 120 Inequality in America

SOC 251 Sex, Love, Race & Beyond

SOC 410 Race: Special Topics

SST 239 Slavery & the American Experience

SST 245 Sexual Ecologies of Race