Prerequisites: None

Exam Type: No Exam

This course examines key intersections of race, politics and law within a historical trajectory of evolving conceptions and associated realities of racial identity in American society. Though race has always been a loaded and controversial construct in our American journey, its current and increasingly-fluid representation is well removed from its dualistic color-line depiction at the turn of the 20th century. This course analyzes these changing representations over time and their associated legal and political manifestations while accounting for the events and ideologies driving this transformation. Accordingly, such relevant factors as the formation of American racial identity, the struggle for racial equality, the impact of traditional civil rights movements, ongoing disparities in criminal justice, changing demographics, evolving issues of race, anti-immigrant sentiment, relevant economic and political turmoil, and sympathy for the loss of whiteness in traditional national identity will be discussed through literature, journalism, and visual media.

Students may complete a research paper that would satisfy the Analytical Paper requirement.