Dr Sara Salem Room STC S218

This course is available with permission to General Course ‘Spring Semester’ students.

The course provides an introduction to theoretical and contemporary debates around race, racism and empire. It explores the main theoretical perspectives which have been used to analyse the production of race, racism and colonialism in a contemporary framework, touching on the role of historical events in creating difference, including the “discovery” of the Americas, the transatlantic slave trade, the expansion of European empires, and the Renaissance and Enlightenment among others, before examining in detail the lived areas within our contemporary social and political climate where analyses of ‘race’, racism, belonging and identity are urgently needed; as well as the ways in which various categories such as class, gender, sexuality, among others, intersect with race. The course adopts a global lens, focusing on theory and cases from across the world. Topics include: race and empire in social theory; colonialism, settler colonialism and post-colonialism; capitalism and race; intersectionality; food; tourism; technology; migration; and the role of resistance and future liberation in anti-racist movements.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures/seminars, online materials and classes totalling a minimum of 20 hours in LT.

Reading Weeks: Students on this course will have a reading week in LT Week 6, in line with departmental policy.

One formative essay in LT.

• L Back & J Solomos (Eds), Theories of Race and Racism (2nd Edition, Routledge 2009);
• K Murji & J Solomos (Eds), Theories of Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives (CUP 2014);
• MJ Schueller, Locating race: Global sites of post-colonial citizenship (SUNY Press 2009);
• DF Da Silva, Toward a Global Idea of Race (U Minnesota Press 2007);
• Y Gunaratnam, Researching ‘Race’ and Ethnicity: Methods, knowledge and power (Sage 2003);
• R Miles, Racism after Race Relations (Routledge 1993);
• J Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Duke UP 2017);
• C Mohanty, Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Duke UP 2003);
• H Mirza (Ed), Black British Feminism (Routledge 1997);
• K Owusu (Ed), Black British Cultural Studies (Routledge 1999);
• D T Goldberg, Racist Culture (Blackwell 1993);
• P Gilroy, There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack (Hutchinson 1987);
• E Baptist, The half has never been told: Slavery and the making of American capitalism (Hachette 2016);
• P Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (Routledge 1991);
• F Fanon, Black skin, White Masks (Grove press 2008);
• D T Goldberg (Ed), Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader (Blackwell 1994);
• P.H. Collins & J. Solomos (eds) Sage Handbook of Race and Ethnic Studies (Sage 2010);
• A Roy, The Doctor and the Saint: Caste, Race, and Annihilation of Caste, the Debate between BR Ambedkar and MK Gandhi (Haymarket 2017).

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the ST.

An electronic copy of the assessed essay, to be uploaded to Moodle, no later than 4.00pm on the third Thursday of Summer Term.  

Attendance at all classes and submission of all set coursework is required.