The Racial Justice Initiative is an interdivisional collaboration launched in response to the events of 2020. In the spring, the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery sparked a widespread reckoning with police violence and systemic racism. During this same period, the rapidly unfolding COVID-19 pandemic called renewed attention to the unequal burdens and disparities that communities of color in the United States continue to face. Throughout months of sustained protests, Black Lives Matter activists have demanded that these events be situated within the broader context of systemic racial inequality, white supremacy, and injustice rooted within the country’s foundations. The Racial Justice Initiative brings together courses from a range of disciplinary perspectives that seek to understand how such systems are created and maintained, and how different forms of anti-racist resistance emerge in response. The courses will focus on historical and contemporary racial dynamics both in the United States and beyond. Students enrolled in Racial Justice courses will be invited to participate in shared guest speaker events that address themes central to the initiative.

 

Course:

ANTH 219  Divided Cities

Professor:

Jeffrey Jurgens  

CRN:

90190

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    10:20 AM - 11:40 AM Reem Kayden Center 102

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

20

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Environmental & Urban Studies

This class offers an introduction to modern cities and everyday urban life, with a central focus on cities that are both socially and spatially divided. On the one hand, we will examine how political-economic inequalities and collective differences (organized in relation to race, color, gender, sexuality, class, [dis]ability, and other social categories) are expressed in geographic boundaries and other aspects of the built environment. On the other, we will explore how state agencies, real estate developers, activists, residents, and other social actors make and remake city spaces in ways that reinforce, rework, challenge, and refuse the existing terms of inequality and difference. The class will revolve around case studies of cities around the world (e.g., Berlin, Johannesburg, Kunming, and Rio de Janeiro) as well as cities in the US (e.g., Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City). More broadly, we will trace the history of urban segregation from a perspective that is both transnational and committed to the pursuit of racial justice (as well as other forms of societal transformation). This class builds on assigned reading in anthropology and other disciplines, critical writing and discussion, and focused film viewing. At the same time, it provides students with an opportunity to reflect on urban theorizing through collaborations with community partners in Kingston and other cities. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

ANTH 275  Post-Apartheid Imaginaries

Professor:

Yuka Suzuki  

CRN:

90191

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    12:10 PM - 1:30 PM Olin 101

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

18

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights

South Africa and Zimbabwe both have been marked by one of the most brutal systems of racial segregation ever seen in the world. Before Independence, the distinction between white and black signaled the stark difference between a life of guaranteed comfort and privilege on the one hand, and a life of limited access to inferior land, education, housing, and employment on the other. Following decades-long struggles for liberation, each country worked to reinvent itself,  crafting new national narratives of cross-racial, cross-ethnic unity. This course explores what it means to imagine postcolonial nationhood in the context of clearly visible, radical inequalities. We consider the politics of land redistribution and resettlement in contexts where the vast majority of arable land remains under white ownership after Independence. We look closely at the charismatic authority of politicians like Jacob Zuma and Robert Mugabe, alongside the intensification of ethnic discourses that culminated in genocide in Zimbabwe. Other topics we explore include intersections between race and gendered violence, the rise of witchcraft and the occult, racialized economies of rooibos tea, and paradoxes of white African belonging. This is a D&J-designated course because it examines the ongoing effects of apartheid in southern Africa. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

ANTH 363  Asia and America: Imperial Formations

Professor:

Naoko Kumada  

CRN:

90556

Schedule:

    Thur   2:00 PM - 4:20 PM Olin 301

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis

Class cap:

12

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Asian Studies; Global & International Studies

The Atlanta shooting and the sharp increase in anti-Asian violence have taken racial politics in the US to a new level. These attacks echo the anti-China rhetoric spread by mainstream and social media, corporations, and policymakers. Taking an anthropological approach, this course attempts to offer historical, cultural, and geopolitical contexts for understanding the racial tension surrounding Asian communities in the US and abroad today. It takes into account the long-standing historical and systemic factors in US society as well as new global challenges brought by the pandemic and the rise of China. Seeing the US as an empire, the course explores how its imperial formations and practices shaped, and were shaped by, Asia and its interactions with Asia. It examines how America continued its westward capitalist and militarist expansion, shifting its frontier as it added territories, colonies, and military bases across the globe, in the islands in the Pacific and Asia (Hawaii, Samoa, Marshall Islands, Okinawa, and Diego Garcia). Moving beyond the clear-cut boundaries of sovereign nation-states, we explore layered forms of sovereignty, nationhood, and (extra)territoriality between Asia and America. Topics include racial and gendered forms of Asian labor and migration (‘coolies’ and ‘prostitutes’), the practices of building and maintaining US military bases, America’s wars on Asia (the Philippines, Vietnam), and local responses. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

 

Course:

EUS/AS 309  Environmental Justice: Art, Science, and Radical Cartography

Professor:

Elias Dueker and Krista Caballero

CRN:

90169

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    12:10 PM - 1:30 PM New Annandale House

Distributional Area:

SA Social Analysis

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Experimental Humanities; Human Rights

We generally assume maps are objective, accurate representations of data and the world around us when, in fact, they depict the knowledge, experience, and values of the humans who draft them. As a hybrid EUS practicum + colloquium, this course will explore ways in which ecological issues are entangled with colonial histories of racism and supremacy, resource extraction and expansion through mapping. Native American scholarship will ground our exploration as we consider the impact and consequences of mapping as a tool used historically to claim ownership and invite exploitation. We will also investigate the evolution of radical cartography to counter these practices and imagine alternative mapping for more just ecological futures. A series of Indigenous scholars and activists will provide an opportunity for students to learn from experts working at the forefront of their fields to address environmental injustices locally, nationally, and internationally. These guest lectures will be paired with hands-on projects that explore mapping as a tool for environmental advocacy alongside artistic and counter-mapping approaches that experiment with ways we might communicate scientific and humanistic knowledge to a wider audience. In both theory and practice this team-taught course aims to reconsider and transform ways of engaging community science and community action through collaborative inquiry, interdisciplinary experimentation, and meaningful cross-cultural dialogue. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

EUS 321  GIS for Environmental Justice

Professor:

Susan Winchell-Sweeney  

CRN:

90170

Schedule:

  Wed  Fri   10:20 AM - 11:40 AM Henderson Comp. Center 101A

Distributional Area:

LS SA Laboratory Science Social Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap

9

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Historical Studies; Human Rights

Using ESRI GIS software and associated apps, students will receive formal instruction in the fundamentals of using spatial information, conducting spatial analysis, and producing high-quality cartographic products. Students will learn how GIS may be used as a tool for identifying and assessing environmental justice (EJ) issues at the local, regional and global scale. Students will apply these GIS skills and knowledge base to a team-based research project focused on an environmental justice problem. The course culminates in a presentation session, where students show their analysis and results to their peers, professors and the greater Bard community. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

HIST 129  Urban American History

Professor:

Jeannette Estruth  

CRN:

90147

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    5:40 PM - 7:00 PM Olin 201

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Environmental & Urban Studies

This class will explore the history of the urban American experience. We will ask: what makes a city? How have people built cities, inhabited them, and lived urban lives? What drives urban development and growth? What is the role of cities within capitalism and within government? Together we will begin to think of cities as sets of relationships, as well as a distinct spatial form. To that end, this course will use cities as a lens to research the following themes in United States history: labor and markets, wealth and inequality, ethnic identity and race, and gender and the environment since industrialization. With these frames of analysis, we will examine what ideas activists, architects, planners, social scientists, literary scholars, critical theorists, and sociologists have generated about urban America.  Our tools of exploration will include lectures, discussions, scholarly books, primary sources, articles, blogs, and films. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

HIST 160  Latin-American Histories

Professor:

Miles Rodriguez  

CRN:

90149

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    12:10 PM - 1:30 PM Olin 301

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Latin American/Iberian Studies

There are now nearly sixty million people of Latin American origin or descent in the United States. Yet there is no agreement by members of this population, nor otherwise, on how to define, speak of, or understand them, in terms of either common or diverse experiences or histories. The very names people have used to describe them, and how they have described themselves, alternate, fluctuate, and vary tremendously by person, place, time, and circumstance. Those names include, but are not limited to: Hispanic, Latin, Latina, Latino, Latinx, and Latin-American, as well as for more specific groups, including: Afro-Latino, Chicano, Cuban, Dominican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Mexican, Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Xicano, and people of Indigenous and Latin American descent in the US. This class deals with the ways in which those of Latin American origin can be understood in terms of culture, race, ethnicity, nationality, and identity, and the attendant controversies inside and outside of their communities. It focuses on the distinct, and distinctive, qualities and histories of various parts of this population, including by far the largest group, people of Mexican descent, as well as the next largest, of Spanish Caribbean and Central American descent. Topics for special consideration include: ways to name, describe, and conceptualize people of Latin American origin and descent in the US; relations between different homelands and diasporas in Latin America and the US; race, racism, and mestizaje, or interracial mixture, as process and ideology; popular social movements; civil rights; women's rights; labor; migration; and relations with other Americans of different, as well as the same or similar origins. Its goal is to create a more complex and complete historical understanding of people of Latin American descent in the US today. LAIS Core Course. Historiography course. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

HIST 195  Living Black in America:  Major Themes in African American History

Professor:

Myra Armstead  

CRN:

90144

Schedule:

Mon  Wed     10:20 AM - 11:40 AM Olin 201

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

Class cap:

22

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies; American Studies

This course is intended to provide a foundation for understanding the African American experience in the past, and contemporary resonances of that past.  Rather than a strictly chronological overview, this survey is thematically organized.  Each theme will be approached  within a periodization that moves forward through the preindustrial, industrial, and postindustrial eras—thus highlighting the way in which the race/class nexus will be a central concern.   Major themes will be: the economics or wages of Blackness, social and cultural constructions of race, violence/surveillance/criminalization, self-constructed identities (racial, national, ethnic, gender), representations of Blackness (in art and literature),Black cosmologies/philosophies/resistance strategies and politics, and memory.  As students of history, we will consider continuities and discontinuities, connections and rupture—when, how, and why these occur.  While the themes can be viewed as discreet subjects, the ways in which they overlap and intersect will be addressed in the course as well. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

HIST 2210  Africans, Empire, and the Great War

Professor:

Wendy Urban-Mead  

CRN:

90167

Schedule:

 Tue      5:40 PM - 8:00 PM Olin 303

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

8

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies

What made the First World War a "world" war? Many factors contributed to the conflict's designation as a world war, but the significant role of Africa, Africans, and members of the African Diaspora in the war is not least among them. Some Africans and members of the African diaspora signed up in response to a call for volunteers, others were ruthlessly coerced, and many more became involved for reasons that fell somewhere in the uncertain middle ground between coercion and willing participation. African-Americans, and African subjects under French, German, and British colonial rule in Africa and the Caribbean were drawn into the war's vortex. Following DuBois' prescient observation that "[t]he problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line," this course visits the Great War with an eye to unpacking the experiences, choices, and impacts of Africans and members of the African diaspora in the context of both empire and white supremacy. Gender - in conversation with questions regarding masculinity, warfare, and race - will be a vital course theme. Working from a wide range of primary materials and selected theoretical and secondary works, students will have the opportunity both to form questions in response to what they find in the readings, and explore possible answers, using the skills of the historian. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

This course is cross-listed with the MAT program.

.

Course:

HIST 225  Migrants and Refugees in the Americas

Professor:

Miles Rodriguez  

CRN:

90155

Schedule:

 Tue  Thurs    10:20 AM - 11:40 AM Olin 301

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Latin American/Iberian Studies

Cross-listed: American Studies; Human Rights; Latin American Studies.

The Border. The Ban. The Wall. Raids. Deportations. Separation of Families. Immigrant Rights. Sanctuary. Refugee Resettlement. These words - usually confined to policy, enforcement, and activism related to migrants and refugees - have recently exploded into the public view and entered into constant use. The current political administration made migratory and refugee enforcement, and of migration more generally, a centerpiece of its electoral campaign and the subject of its first executive orders, generating broad public controversy. Most migration to the US is from Latin America, by far the largest single migrant population is from Mexico, and the rise of Central American migration has proved enduring. Focusing on south-north migration from these Latin American regions, this class argues that it is impossible to understand the current political situation in the US without studying the relatively lesser-known history of migrant and refugee human rights over the last three decades, including massive protests, movements for sanctuary, and attempts at reform and enforcement. The class takes into account shifting global demographics, changing reasons for migration, rapid legal and political changes, complex enforcement  policies and practices, and powerful community movements for reform, which are often forgotten  with the opening and closing of a given news cycle. The class also argues that migrant and refugee voices matter and are critical to understanding migration as an historical and current problem. The course includes migrant, refugee, and activist narratives, and an array of historical, legal, political, and other primary sources. Its goal is to create a more complete historical understanding of Latin American-origin migration in the contemporary US context. This course is part of the Liberal Arts Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement and Education initiative. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

HIST 331  Latin America: Race, Religion and Revolution

Professor:

Miles Rodriguez  

CRN:

90161

Schedule:

  Wed     9:20 AM - 11:40 AM Olin 303

Distributional Area:

HA Historical Analysis

D+J Difference and Justice

Class cap:

15

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  American Studies; Global & International Studies; Human Rights; Latin American/Iberian Studies; Study of Religions

This research seminar will study the violent interactions between race, religion, and revolution in Latin America from the early twentieth-century to the present, to understand how these interactions have mattered to the region's history and how they explain some of its most violent current conflicts. The very name "Latin America" derived from and became associated with specific racial, religious, and revolutionary meanings through a history of violence. The seminar will begin by studying how racial concepts formed and became fixed ideas through distinct revolutionary-inspired intellectual debates on interracial mixture and indigenous rights. Based in Mexico and Peru, the formation of concepts like global mestizaje, a "cosmic race," and indigenismo involved rival valuations of each nation's indigenous and colonial histories and cultures, with lasting effects. The seminar will then explore the simultaneous rise of wars and conflicts over radically different religious meanings and faiths, within and outside of Catholicism, including native religions and the rise of Evangelical Protestant Christianity. The latter part of the seminar will focus on Guatemala, which dramatically combined extreme violence over race, religion, and revolution, and focused global attention on indigenous rights and human rights. These histories will allow for a deeper understanding of the rise of different forms of violence in Central America today, and therefore of the current human rights, migrant, and refugee crisis centered there and involving other parts of Latin America and the US. This seminar emphasizes the narratives, interpretations, and voices of participants in the history, and critical engagement with these primary sources in the writing of the history. This course is part of the Racial Justice Initiative, an interdisciplinary collaboration among students and faculty to further the understanding of racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.

 

Course:

PS 392  The Political Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois

Professor:

Mie Inouye  

CRN:

90572

Schedule:

 Thurs      10:20 AM - 12:40 PM Hegeman 201

Distributional Area:

MBV Meaning, Being, Value

Class cap:

12

Credits:

4

Cross-listed:  Africana Studies; American Studies

This seminar explores the political thought of the sociologist, organizer, and political theorist William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. We will trace the development of Du Bois’s political thought on the themes of organization, race, class, leadership, democracy, and freedom over the course of his long career. Throughout, we’ll consider the relationship between Du Bois’s experiences of political organizing in the Niagara Movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Socialist Party and major developments in his political thought. Finally, we will consider the relevance of Du Bois’s political thought to today’s black freedom struggle.