HSTAA 231 A: Race And American History

Description: We will survey U.S. history, from its beginnings to today, by exploring how race has enabled conceptions of the American nation and empire and shaped everyday practices and social interactions among different peoples. How have racial concepts, racial representations, and racial practices fundamentally defined power dynamics in the United States? From slave revolts to the Black Lives Matter movement, how have various individuals and organizations framed and pursued racial justice?

HSTAA 231 Syllabus

Syllabus Attachment (on department and university policies)

Chicago Style Guide

Grading Rubric

September 26  Race, Nation, Power

September 27 Readings

Dunbar-Ortiz, 1-14 [pages for week 1 uploaded only].

1. George Lipsitz, “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness,” from The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 1-23.

2. “16,000 Readers Shared Their Experiences of Being Told to ‘Go Back.’ Here Are Some of Their Stories,” New York Times, July 19, 2019.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/reader-center/trump-go-back-stories.html

3. John Eligon, “The El Paso Screed, and the Racist Doctrine Behind It,” New York Times, August 7, 2019.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/us/el-paso-shooting-racism.html

4. “Declaration of Independence (1776)” and “Constitution of the United States (1787),” in Melvin I. Urofsky and Paul Finkelman, Documents of American Constitutional and Legal History, second ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 54-58, 85-97.

5. “Naturalization Act, March 26, 1790,” in The Columbia Documentary History of the Asian American Experience, ed. Franklin Odo (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 13-14. 

October 1 Founding a White Republic

October 3 Challenging and Expanding Slavery

October 4 Reading

6. Walter Johnson, “Reading Bodies and Marking Race,” from Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 135-161.

October 8 Making Race Scientific

October 10 Civilization and Colonization

October 11 Reading

7. “Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857),” in Melvin I. Urofsky and Paul Finkelman, Documents of American Constitutional and Legal History, second ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 366-372.

October 15 Striking for Freedom

October 17 Reconstructing Race and Nation

October 22 Asiatic "Invasion" and Exclusion

October 24 Redeeming White Supremacy

October 25 Reading

8. “Plessy v. Ferguson (1896),” in Melvin I. Urofsky and Paul Finkelman, Documents of American Constitutional and Legal History, second ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 539-543.

October 31 The White Man's Burden

November 1 Readings

9. Excerpts from Takao Ozawa v. United States (1922) and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), from Ian F. Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race, revised edition (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 176-182.
10. Peggy Pascoe, “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of ‘Race’ in Twentieth-Century America,” Journal of American History 83, no. 1 (June 1996): 44-69.

November 5 "Americanizing" Within and Abroad

November 7 The Rising Tide of Color

November 14 Incarcerating Aliens and Citizens

November 19 Anticommunism and White Supremacy

November 21 The Black Freedom Movement

November 26 Politics of Liberation and Repression

December 3 What's Wrong with Color Blindness?

December 5 Seeing Race, Seeking Racial Justice

December 6 Readings

11. Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union,” March 18, 2008. https://constitutioncenter.org/amoreperfectunion/docs/Race_Speech_Transcript.pdf

12. Ana Mari Cauce, “We the People: Diversity, Equity and Difference at the UW,” April 16, 2015.

https://www.washington.edu/president/2015/04/17/we-the-people-diversity-equity-and-difference-at-the-uw/

13. American Historical Association, “Statement from the AHA on Domestic Terrorism, Bigotry, and History,” August 26, 2019.

https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2019/statement-from-the-aha-on-domestic-terrorism-bigotry-and-history

14. Robin D. G. Kelley, “Polycultural Me,” Utne Reader (September-October 1999).

http://www.utne.com/politics/the-people-in-me?pageid=1#PageContent1

15. Kenneth J. Cooper, “I’m a Descendant of the Cherokee Nation’s Black Slaves. Tribal Citizenship Is Our Birthright,” Washington Post, September 15, 2017.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/09/15/im-a-descendant-of-the-cherokee-nations-black-slaves-tribal-citizenship-is-our-birthright/?utm_term=.bc0235aa7a18

16. Donald J. Trump for President, “Immigration Reform That Will Make America Great Again,” 2016.

17. Jenni Monet, “Climate Justice Meets Racism: This Moment at Standing Rock Was Decades in the Making,” Yes! Magazine, September 16, 2016.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/this-moment-at-standing-rock-was-decades-in-the-making-20160916

18. “Herstory” and “What We Believe” at:

https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/herstory/

https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/what-we-believe/

19. Claudia Rankine, “I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought about Their Privilege. So I Asked,” New York Times Magazine, July 17, 2019.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/magazine/white-men-privilege.html?searchResultPosition=4