Philosophy and Race (S18)

Class Schedule:

Histories and Contexts of Race

W 1/17:

  • Introduction & Expectations
  • Francisco de Vitoria, On the American Indians, in Vitoria: Political Writings (P 250-251) [1538-9]
  • Valladolid debate: Bartolomé de Las Casas & Juan Ginés de Sepulveda [1550-1]

F 1/19: Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, “The Modern Invention of Race” in Achieving Our Humanity: The Idea of the Postracial Future (P 3-43)

M 1/22: Michael Omi & Howard Winant, “Racial Formation in the United States” in The Idea of Race (P 181-212)

W 1/24: Karen E. Fields & Barbara Fields, “Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America” in Racecraft (111-148) 

Postracialism

F 1/26: Paul C. Taylor, “Taking Postracialism Seriously: From Movement Mythology to Racial Formation” in Du Bois Review 11.1 (P 9-25)

M 1/29: Kathryn T. Gines, “A Critique of Postracialism: Conserving Race and Complicating Blackness Beyond the Black-white Binary” in Du Bois Review 11.1 (P 75-86)

W 1/31: Alfred Frankowski, “The Violence of Post-Racial Memory and the Political Sense of Mourning” in Contemporary Aesthetics 11 (n.p.)

Conservation and Elimination

F 2/2: W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of the Races” and “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” in The Souls of Black Folk (P 179-188, 7-14)

M 2/5: Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race” in The Idea of Race (P 118-135)

Tuesday, February 5th @ 7pm, ELC Forum
Roy Wood Sellars Lecture: José Medina (Northwestern University)
“Taking Responsibility for Racial Violence: ‘Shooting’ the Racist Imagination”

W 2/7: Paul C. Taylor, “Appiah’s Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Reality of Race” in Social Theory and Practice 26.1 (P 103-128)

F 2/9: Lucius T. Outlaw, Jr., “Conserve Races? In Defense of W.E.B. Du Bois” in Critical Social Theory in the Interests of Black Folks (P 139-160)

Identities

M 2/12: Charles Mills, “But What Are You, Really? The Metaphysics of Race” in Blackness Visible (P 41-66)

W 2/14: Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” in Stanford Law Review 43.6 (P 1241-1299)

F 2/16: David Haekwon Kim, “Shame and Self-Revision in Asian American Assimilation” in Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race (P 103-132)

M 2/19: Linda Martín Alcoff, “Latinos and the Categories of Race” in Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (P 227-246)

W 2/21: Ofelia Schutte, “Negotiating Latina Identities” in Latin American Philosophy for the 21st Century: The Human Condition, Values, and the Search for Identity (P 337-350)

F 2/23: Sharon Patricia Holland, “Race: There’s No Place Like ‘Beyond’” in The Erotic Life of Racism (P 17-39)  

Blackness

M 2/26: Chris Lebron, “The Radical Lessons We Have Not Yet Learned” in The Making of Black Lives Matter (P 127-151)

W 2/28: Lionel K. McPherson and Tommie Shelby, “Blackness and Blood: Interpreting African American Identity” Philosophy and Public Affairs 32.2 (P 171-192)

F 3/2: Frank B. Wilderson, Samira Spatzek, and Paula von Gleich, “‘The Inside-Outside of Civil Society’: An Interview with Frank B. Wilderson, III” in Black Studies Papers 2.1 (P 4-22)

M 3/5: Saidiya V. Hartman, “Instinct and Injury” in Scenes of Subjection (164-206)

Whiteness

W 3/7: Charles Mills, “White Ignorance” in Black Rights/White Wrongs (P 49-71)

F 3/9: Linda Martín Alcoff, “Double Consciousness” in The Future of Whiteness (P 136-177)

SPRING BREAK: M 3/12 – F 3/16

M 3/19: George Yancy, “Whiteness: ‘Unseen’ Things Seen” in Black Bodies, White Gazes (P 33-64)

W 3/21: Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness As Property” [sections I and II] in Harvard Law Review 106.8 (P 1710-1745)

Solidarity

F 3/23: Angela Davis, “Class and Race In the Early Women’s Rights Campaign” in Women, Race & Class (P 46-69)

M 3/26: Walter Rodney, “Black Power, A Basic Understanding” and “Black Power, Its Relevance to the West Indies” in The Groundlings With My Brothers (16-34)

W 3/28: Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) & Charles V. Hamilton, “The Myths of Coalition” in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (P 58-84)

F 3/30: Tommie Shelby, “Social Identity and Group Solidarity” in We Who are Dark (P 201-242)

Racism

M 4/2: Frederick Douglass, “What To the Slave Is the 4th Of July?” 

W 4/4: Tommie Shelby, “Is Racism In the Heart?” in Journal of Social Philosophy 33.3 (P 411-420)

F 4/6: Frantz Fanon, “Lived Experience of the Black Man” in Black Skin, White Masks (P 89-119)

M 4/9: Frantz Fanon, “Racism and Culture” in Toward the African Revolution (P 31-44)

W 4/11: Maria Lugones, “Hablando Cara a Cara/Speaking Face to Face: An Exploration of Ethnocentric Racism” in Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions (P 41-50)

Politics

F 4/13: Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (P 31-78)

M 4/16: Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner & Kyle Whyte, “Theorizing Indigeneity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism” in the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race (P 152-167)

W 4/18: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation” in From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (P 191-219)

F 4/20: Frank B. Wilderson, III, “The Black Liberation Army and the Paradox of Political Engagement” in Postcoloniality-Decoloniality-Black Critique (P 175-207)

M 4/23: Naomi Zack, “White Privilege, Entitlements, and Rights” in White Privilege and Black Rights: The Injustice of U.S. Police Racial Profiling and Homicide (P 1-30)

W 4/25: Bernard Boxill, “The Morality of Reparation” in Social Theory and Practice 2.1 (P 113-123)

F 4/27: Falguni Sheth, “The Newest Unruly Threat: Muslim Men and Women” in Toward a Political Philosophy of Race (87-109)

M 4/30: Wrap up – Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again”