Race and Ethnicity in the Americas
512-524, Fall 2013
Tuesdays 5-7:40
429 Cooper Street, seminar room
Dr. Lorrin Thomas
429 Cooper Street
856-225-2656
lthomas2@camden.rutgers.edu
office hours: Mondays 10:30-12:30, Thursdays 12:30-1:30; by appt.
This course takes a comparative approach to examining the complex history of racial and
ethnic difference in the Americas, from the sixteenth through the twenty-first century.
Focusing on academic interpretations of race and ethnicity as well as some primarysource texts – so that we experience the language, imagery, and animating questions
surrounding race and difference across different eras and regions – we will explore the
following themes and problems:
• How “race” and “ethnicity” have operated as social categories throughout the
history of the Americas
• How hierarchies of race and ethnicity have shaped historical and political
outcomes across the Americas
• How constructions and descriptions of physiological and cultural difference
around the Americas have changed over time
• How the experiences of difference defined by physical and cultural markers
of descent (“color” and “race,” i.e.) have varied across time, place, and group
in the history of the Americas
Course Requirements:
1. Each class meeting: You must answer a series of short questions about each of the
readings assigned for that day. [For list of questions, see appendix A of the syllabus.]
In preparation for class during the weeks for which you don’t write a reflection paper (see
#2 below), write four discussion questions and email them to me by 8 p.m. on Monday
night. [For guidelines to writing discussion questions, see Appendix B of the syllabus.]
Participation, including discussion questions:
35%
2. FOUR 3-page reflection papers, based on weekly readings of your choosing. 25%
3. Final paper: Choose one of the major topics of the course and, from that set of issues,
frame a question/argument that you will explore in 15 pages. This should involve a
review of readings from two or three weeks’ readings, plus at least three additional
articles or one scholarly book on a relevant subject. A one-page proposal plus
bibliography is due in class on October 22.
Preliminary writing (due Oct. 22 & Nov. 19 ); 15 page paper (due Dec. 17) 40%
Readings:
The following books are available at the University District Bookstore, 601 Cooper Street.
Readings marked “CR” on the syllabus are excerpts or articles collected into a course reader that
is on “electronic reserve” at the Robeson Library website, via IRIS (follow link to “Reserves” on
the IRIS main page; search for my name under “Instructor” and you’ll get to the list of articles
that you can download.)
Ira Berlin
W.E.B. DuBois
Laura Gomez
Richard Graham, ed.
Patricia Limerick
Nell Irvin Painter
Laura Putnam
Peter Wade
C Vann Woodward
Generations of Captivity (2003)
The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Manifest Destinies (2007)
The Idea of Race in Latin America (1990)
The Legacy of Conquest (1987)
The History of White People (2010)
Radical Moves (2013)
Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (1997)
The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955)
_________________________________
Week 1
Sept. 3
Introductions
Week 2
Sept. 10
Race and Ethnicity, Identity and Definition
Nash, “The Hidden History of Mestizo America” CR
Fields, “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America” CR
Wagley, “On the Concept of Social Race in the Americas” CR
Burns, “Unfixing Race” CR
Wade, ch. 1, “The Meaning of ‘Race’ and ‘Ethnicity’”
Week 3
Sept. 17
“Black” and “Indian” in Latin America: an Overview
Wade, chapters 2-5 in Race and Ethnicity in Latin America
Chambers, “Little Middle Ground: The Instability of a Mestizo Identity in the Andes, 18th and
19th Centuries” in Appelbaum, Race and Nation in Modern Latin America CR
Cahill, “Colour by Numbers: Racial and Ethnic Categories in the Viceroyalty of Peru,
1532-1824” CR
Week 4
Sept. 24
Native Peoples and the United States
Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West [Focus on the second
part, chs. 6-8 and 10. Read the Introduction carefully and skim Part I so that you understand why the book is
structured the way it is, and what the author is trying to do with the book as a whole.]
Shoemaker, “How Indians Got to be Red,” AHR 102 (June 1997): 625-644 CR
Vaughn, “From White Man to Redskin,” AHR 87 (Oct. 1982): 917-953 CR [optional]
Week 5
Oct. 1
Enslaved People in the United States
Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves
Week 6
Oct. 8
The Long Shadow of Slavery in Latin America
Garrigus, “Saint Domingue’s Free People of Color and the Tools of Revolution” in The
World of the Haitian Revolution CR
Graham, ed., The Idea of Race in Latin America: Introduction; Skidmore, ch. 2; Helg, ch.3
Guerra, ch. 5 “From Revolution to Involution in the Early Cuban Republic” in Appelbaum, et al,
Race and Nation in Modern Latin America CR
de la Fuente, “Myths of Racial Democracy: Cuba, 1900-1912,” LARR 34 (1999): 39-73 CR
Jiménez Román, “Un Hombre (Negro) del Pueblo: José Celso Barbosa and thePuerto Rican
‘Race’ Toward Whiteness,” CENTRO Journal 8 (1996): 9-29 CR
Week 7
Oct. 15
“Whiteness” in the United States
Painter, A History of White People [skim chapters 1-7: know what’s in them, but don’t focus on this part]
Kolchin, “Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America” JAH 89 (June 2002):
154-173 CR
Roediger, “On Autobiography and Theory,” “The Prehistory of the White Worker,” and
“‘Neither a Servant nor a Master am I’” in The Wages of Whiteness CR [optional]
Week 8
Oct. 22
From Slavery to Segregation in the U.S.
Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow
Due today: one-page proposal plus bibliography
Week 9
Oct. 29
U.S. Racism and the New U.S. Empire
DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk
Rogers, “DuBois, Garvey, and Pan-African,” The Journal of Negro History 2 (April 1955):
154-165 CR
Reed, “W.E.B. DuBois: A Perspective on the Bases of his Political Thought,” Political
Theory 13 (Aug. 1985): 431-456 CR [optional]
Week 10
Nov. 5
Manifest Destinies and the Borderlands
Gomez, Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race
Calderón-Zaks, “Debated Whiteness amid World Events: Mexican and Mexican American
Subjectivity and the U.S. Relationship with the Americas, 1924-1936” in Mexican
Studies 2011 CR
Week 11
Nov. 12
Race, Nationalism, and Mestizaje in Latin America
Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race, excerpt CR
Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo in Mexico, 1910-1940” in Graham, ed., The Idea
of Race in Latin America
Miller, ch. 1 “Vasconcelos’s About-Face on the Cosmic Race” CR
Stern, ch. 7 “From Mestizophilia to Biotypology: Racialization and Science in Mexico,
1920-1960” in Appelbaum, et al, Race and Nation in Modern Latin America CR
Weinstein, ch. 9 “Racializing Regional Difference: Sao Paulo versus Brazil, 1932” in
Appelbaum, et al, Race and Nation in Modern Latin America CR
Freyre, Preface; “The Native…”; and “The Negro Slave…” in The Masters and the Slaves CR
Chevalier, “Official Indigenismo in Peru in 1920,” in Mörner, Race and Class in L.A. CR
Week 12
Nov. 19
Transnational Blackness in the Age of U.S. Empire
Putnam, Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age
Thomas, “Resisting the Racial Binary? Puerto Ricans’ Encounter with Race in Depression-Era
New York City,” CENTRO Journal 21 (spring 2009): 5-35 CR
Due today: three page review of additional source(s) for final paper
Week 13
Nov. 26
NO CLASS --THANKSGIVING
Week 14
Dec. 3
The Long Era of Civil Rights Struggles in the U.S.
Myrdal, Intro and ch. 1, “American Ideals,” ch. 2 “Encountering the Negro Problem,” and ch. 4
“Racial Beliefs” in An American Dilemma CR
S.R.G., “Preface to the Issue ‘An American Dilemma Revisited’” Daedalus 124 (Winter
1995): V-XXXIV CR
Kelley, “We Are Not What We Seem: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim
Crow South,” JAH 80 (June 1993): 75-112 CR
Dalfiume, “The Forgotten Years of the Negro Revolution,” Journal of American History 55
(June 1968): 90-106 CR
Joseph, “Dashikis and Democracy: Black Studies, Student Activism, and the Black Power
Movement” Journal of African American History (2003) CR
Week 15
Dec. 10
The Problems of Race in the 21st Century
Holt, The Problem of Race in the 21st Century: ch. 3 “Race, Nation, and the Global Economy”
and “Epilogue: The Future of Race” CR
Holt, “Explaining Racism in U.S. History” in Imagined Histories CR
Sugrue, “‘A More Perfect Union’? The Burden of Race in Obama’s America,” Not Even Past CR
Haney-López, “Race and Erasure: the Salience of Race to Latinos” CR
Kim, “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” Politics and Society 27 (March 1999):
105-138 CR
Wade, ch. 5, “Blacks and Indians in the Postmodern Nation-State” and ch. 6, “Black’ and
Indian Social Movements” in Race and Nation in Modern Latin America