CSER W

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL). The History of Racialization in the United States examines the development of race and racism through the study of significant historical circumstances that define the institutional structure of American Empire and of the resulting interactions among its peoples. Race is not static. Consequently, it is not an ahistorical object, nor a predetermined identity, nor a uniform category of analysis. Traditionally, the history of American race relations is the contact between racially defined groups over time and space of the effort required to maintain social and economic differences among them. Racialization, then, refers to the process by which one population group or many are "placed" in distinct racial categories.

Subject

CSER W

Credits (min)

3

Credits (max)

3

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026

Source

catalog.barnard.edu

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core RequirementCourse listed as ENGL W3510. The master narrative of the United States has always vacillated between valorizations of movement and settlement. While ours is a nation of immigrants, one which privileges its history of westward expansion and pioneering, trailblazing adventurers, we also seem to long for what Wallace Stegner called a “sense of place,” a true belonging within a single locale. Each of these constructions has tended to focus on individuals with a tremendous degree of agency in terms of where and whether they go. However, it is equally important to understand the tension between movement and stasis within communities most frequently subjected to spatial upheavals. To that end, this course is designed to examine narratives of immigration, migration, relocation, and diaspora by authors of color in the United States.

Subject

CSER W

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026

Source

catalog.barnard.edu

This class presents a genealogy of the development of the race concept since the 19th century. Most centrally, we will examine the ways in which race been conceptualized, substantiated, classified, managed and "observed" in (social) science and medicine. We will read that history of science in tandem with philosophical, anthropological, and historical literatures on race and the effects of racial practices in the social and political world writ large. This class will address a series of questions, historical and contemporary. For example, how has the relationship between "race" and "culture" been articulated in the history of anthropology in particular, and in racial theory more broadly? How and why were particular phenotypes understood to signify meaningful biological and social differences? Can there be a concept of race without phenotype—a solely genotypic racial grouping? More broadly, we will examine how particular scientific projects have intersected with, authorized, or enabled specific social and political imaginations.

Subject

CSER W

Credits (min)

4

Credits (max)

4

Credit unit

points

Type

course

Edition

2026

Source

catalog.barnard.edu