Spring 2005
AFR 495 Senior Seminar: The Politics of ‘Miscegenation’ in the United States and South Africa.
Prof. K. Gibel Azoulay [ARH 121 xxx4324] Prof. H. Willemse [318 Mears xxx4553]
Sundays 5-8pm & Wed 12-12:50 ; ARH 323
Objectives:
Using the model of a graduate school seminar, we will examine legal and other definitions of
“mixed race” through an exploration of political status, cultural representations including fiction,
autobiographical essays, and other non-fiction commentaries and film. This team-taught seminar will be
structured around a comparative perspectives that also highlights gender, class and color. The historical
time-frame will include slavery, the period of segregation in the US, apartheid in South Africa and follow
through to contemporary discussions surrounding these issues (debate over a mixed-race category on the
U.S. Census and the political alliances of Coloureds in South Africa).
Requirements:
The Journal (40%):
Journal entries will be submitted every other week and are due no later than Friday 5pm
(beginning Jan 28). You are responsible for writing regular entries on assigned readings and extrapolating
themes for particular attention. Your comments will engage with the interpretation of the authors and your
own analysis of the themes and images in the films. As the semester progresses, entries should demonstrate
cumulative competency with the material.
Class Discussion (30%):
As an advanced seminar, each participant is expected to come to class with notes and an outline
from which to initiate and contribute comments. Every one should expect to lead a discussion at any given
meeting – this includes coming prepared to discuss specific passages in a reading as well as specific
scenes, characters and/or themes in the films.
Individual Projects: final essay (30%)
Your final project (10-15 pp.) will be informed by the readings and discussions throughout the
semester. This is an opportunity to draw on your journal entries and explore in greater depth a theme of
particular interest. Using the texts which ground the course, you will be able to re-read assigned readings,
view films again, and seek supplementary material. Although this is not a formal research paper -- rather
an informed reflective essay, you should have a title and all citations should be referenced in full footnotes
or endnotes. Essays are due by Thursday 19 May 2005.
WEEKLY SYLLABUS (subject to change)
WEEK#1
Thurs 27 Jan (4:15 – Goodnow Hall)
(JSTOR) Bloom, L. 1960. The Coloured People of South Africa. Phylon, 28(2): 139-150.
February, V.A. 1991 [1981]. Introduction: Not a race of slaves. Mind your Colour: The
‘Coloured’ Stereotype in South African Literature. London, New York: Kegan Paul
International, 1-11.
February, V.A. 1991 [1981]. Appendix III Race Classification and definitions in South
Africa. Mind your Colour: The ‘Coloured’ Stereotype in South African Literature. London, New
York: Kegan Paul International, 222-225.
Lewis, Gavin. 1987. Introduction: ‘Coloured ‘ history and ‘Coloured’ identity in South
Africa. Between the Wire and the Wall: A History of South African ‘Coloured’ Politics. Cape
Town: David Philip, 1-7.
Van der Ross, R.E. 1986. The Early Years. The Rise and Decline of Apartheid. Cape
Town: Tafelberg, 1-21.
WEEK #2
Sunday 30 Jan
Discussion of Van der Ross and February continues.
Alex La Guma “Apartheid and the Coloured People of South Africa” n.d. [MAKE COPIES]
Carson Woodson. “The Beginnings of the Miscegenation of the Whites and Blacks.” The Journal
of Negro History 3, 4 (Oct 1918), 335-353. [JSTOR]
Sidney Kaplan. “The Miscegenation Issue in the Election of 1864.” Journal of Negro History 34,
3 (July 1949), 274-343. [JSTOR]
Wed 2 Feb ARTICLES ON JSTOR:
Andrew D. Weinberger. “A Reappraisal of the Constitutionality of Miscegenation Statutes.” The
Journal of Negro Education 26, 4 (Autumn 1957), 435-446.
Richard H. Steckel. “Miscegenation and the American Slave Schedules.” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 11, 2 (Autumn 1980), 251-263.
Pegge Pascoe. “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of ‘Race’ in Twentieth. Century
America.” The Journal of American History 83, 1 (Jun 1996), 44-69.
Victoria E. Bynum. “‘White Negroes’ in Segregated Mississippi: Miscegenation, Racial Identity,
and the Law.” The Journal of Southern History 64, 2 (May 1998), 247-276
WEEK #3
Sunday 6 Feb
MARK TWAIN, PUDD’NHEAD WILSON, A TALE (1894) – In Bookstore
Anne P. Wigger, “The Composition of Mark Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those
Extraordinary Twins:" Chronology and Development.” Modern Philology, Vol. 55, No. 2. (Nov., 1957),
pp. 93-102.
Wed 9 Feb
Eric J. Sundquist. “Mark Twain and Homer Plessy.” Representations, 24 (Autumn, 1988), pp.
102-128.
Myra Jehlen. “The Ties That Bind: Race and Sex in Pudd'nhead Wilson.” American Literary
History, Vol. 2, No. 1. (Spring, 1990), pp. 39-55.
WEEK #4
Sun 13 Feb FILM -- GOD’S STEPCHILDREN (1938 dir Oscar Micheaux)
John Morgan. “Some Accounts of a Motley Coloured, or Pye Girl and Mulatto Boy...”
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 2 (1786), 392-395.
Melville Herskovits. “A Critical Discussion of the ‘Mulatto Hypothesis’.” The Journal of Negro
Education. 3, 3 (July 1934), 389-402
Penelope Bullock “The Mulatto in American Fiction.” Phylon 6, 1 (1945), 78-82.
bell hooks, “Micheaux: Celebrating Blackness.” Black American Literature Forum 25, 2,
(Summer, 1991), pp. 351-360
Nancy Bentley. “White Slaves: The Mulatto Hero in Antebellum Fiction.” American Literature
65, 3 (Sept 1993), 501-522.
bell hooks, “Micheaux: Celebrating Blackness.” Black American Literature Forum 25, 2,
(Summer, 1991), pp. 351-360
15 Feb NORTH LOUNGE// 8pm Slavery & the Making of America
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/about/index.html
Wed 16 Feb
Film: The Life and Times of Sarah Baartman
17 Feb NORTH LOUNGE// PBS 8pm Slavery & the Making of America
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/about/index.html
WEEK # 5
Sun 20 Feb [NOVEL -- must be copied] Sarah Gertrude Millin, God’s Step-Children
Coetzee, J.M. 1980. "Blood, Flaw, Taint, Degeneration: The Case of Sarah Gertrude
Millin." English Studies in Africa 23(1): 41-58.
February, V.A. 1991 [1981]. Smelling strangeness. Mind your Colour: The ‘Coloured'
Stereotype in South African Literature. London, New York: Kegan Paul International, 52-70.
Wed 23 Feb
Van der Ross, R.E. 1986. Off the Common Roll. The Rise and Decline of Apartheid.
(Cape Town: Tafelberg), 248-285.
WEEK #6
Sun 27 Feb Novel (MUST BE COPIED) Abrahams, Peter 1948. The Path of Thunder.
Blair, Peter. 2003. That "Ugly Word": Miscegenation and the Novel In preapartheid
South Africa. Modern Fiction Studies,49 (3): 581-613.
Wed 2 March
Mohamed Adhikari, ‘The Product of Civilization in its Most Repellant Manifestation’:
Ambiguities in the Racial Perceptions of the APO, 1909-23. Journal of African History 38
(1997), 283-300.
Hermann Giliomee. “The Non-Racial Franchise and Afrikaner and Coloured Identities,
1910-1994”). African Affairs 94 (1995), 199-225.
WEEK #7
Sun 6 March
Our Language, Our Music, Our City? (dir. Bridget Thompson). Cape Town: Acacia
Entertainment, Tomas Films
A Brother with Perfect Timing. (dir. Chris Austin). London: Maverick Film Works.
Scenes from Bamboozled
Martin, Denis-Constant. 1999. “The emergence of the Cape Town Coon”. Coon Carnival:
New Year in Cape Town, Past and Present. Cape Town: David Philip, 77-96.
Wed 9 March
Battersby, Jane. 2003. “Sometimes it feels like I’m not Black enough”: Recast(e)ing
Coloured through South African Hip-hop as a Poscolonial text. In Herman Wasserman & Sean
Jacobs (eds.) Shifting Shelves: Post-Apartheid Essays on Mass Media, Culture and Identity. Cape
Town: Kwela Books, 109-130.
Badsha, Farzanah. 2003. “Old Skool Rules/New Skool Breaks: Negotiating Identities in
the Cape Town Hip-hop Scene”, In Herman Wasserman & Sean Jacobs (eds.) Shifting Shelves:
Post-Apartheid Essays on Mass Media, Culture and Identity. Cape Town: kwela Books, 131-143.
Haupt, Adam. 2001. “Black Thing: Hip-Hop Nationalism, ‘Race’ and Gender in Prophets
of da City and Brasse vannie Kaap.” Zimitri Erasmus (ed), Coloured by History, Shaped by Place:
New Perspectives on Coloured Identities in Cape Town. Cape Town: Kwela Books and South
African History Online, 173-191.
WEEK #8
Sun 13 March
Okwui Enwezor, “Reframing the Black Subject: Ideology and Fantasy in Contemporary
South African Representation.” In ed. K. Pinder Race-ing Art History: Critical Readings in Race
and Art History (NY: Routledge, 2001), 371-389.
Judith Wilson. “Optical Illusions: Images of Miscegenation in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century
American Art.” American Art 5, 3 (Summer 1991), 88-107.
Kymberly N. Pinder. “Biraciality and Nationhood in Contemporary American Art.” In ed. K. Pinder
Race-ing Art History: Critical Readings in Race and Art History (NY: Routledge, 2001), 391-401.
Wed 16 March
LANGSTON HUGHES, MULATTO (1935 play) & some short stories
Arthur P. Davis. “The Tragic Mulatto Theme in Six Works of Langston Hughes.” Phylon
16, 2 (1955), 195-204.
SPRING BREAK -- 19 March - 4 April
WEEK #9
Thurs 7 April 4:15- 7:00 [make up for missing Sun// meeting over dinner?]
NELLA LARSEN, PASSING (1929)
Claudia Tate, “Nella Larsen's Passing: A Problem of Interpretation.” Black American
Literature Forum 14, 4 (Winter, 1980), pp. 142-146.
Discussion with Langston Hughes;
Lewis Nkosi – selection from Home & Exile
WEEK #10
Sun 10 April
Roy H du Pre. Separate But Unequal: The ‘Coloured’ People of South Africa - A Political
History. (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1994) – Race classification (65-81); The Group
Area Act (82-93); The Mark of Cain (257-263); Statistics (268-269); The Tragedy of Sandra Laing
(270-271)
Documentary: The Search for Sandra Laing.
Film: Gordimer, Nadine. City lovers, country lovers (1984)
Fugard, Athol. 1974. Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act. Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press. (Play)
WEEK #11
Sunday 5-7
Thurs 4-6
2 Hollywood films
17 April ISLAND IN THE SUN (1957, prod. - Darryl Zanuck)
21 April KINGS GO FORTH (1958 prod. Frank Ross)
WEEK #12
Sun 24 April
Documentary: Cinderella of the Cape Flats. (dir. Jane Kennedy). Johannesburg: Project10.
Post-1994 – Ethnicity and nation
Alexander, Neville. Nation Building and the Politics of Identity. An Ordinary Country.
(Scottsville: University of Natal Press, 2002), 88-110.
Z. Erasmus. "Introduction: Re-Imagining Coloured Identities in Post Apartheid South
Africa." pp. 13-28 In ed. Zimitri Erasmus, Coloured by History, Shaped by Place: New
Perspectives on Coloured Identities in Cape Town. (Cape Town: Kwela Books and South African
History Online, 2001).
Z. Erasmus. “Race and Identity in the nation.” pp.9-33. In ed. John Daniel, Roger Southall
& Jessica Lutchman, State of the Nation – South Africa 2004-2005. (Cape Town: HSRC Press,
2005).
K. Gibel Azoulay”Interpreting the Census: The Elasticity of Whiteness and the
Depoliticization of Race.” pp 155-170 In eds. C. Stokes and T. Menendez, Racial Liberalism and
the Politics of Urban America (Michigan State University Press, 2003)
Wed 27 April
(JSTOR) Halisi, C.R.D. 1997. “From Liberation to Citizenship: identity and Innovation in
Black South African Political Thought. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 30(1): 61-85.
Willemse, Hein. 1990. Die Skrille Sonbesies. Emergent Black Afrikaans Poets in search of
Authority. In Martin Trump (ed.) Rendering Things Visible: Essays on South African Literary
Culture. Johannesburg: Ravan.
Thiven Reddy. “The Politics of Naming: The Constitution of Coloured Subjects in South
Africa." pp. 64-79 ed. Zimitri Erasmus, Coloured by History, Shaped by Place: New Perspectives
on Coloured Identities in Cape Town. (Cape Town: Kwela Books and South African History
Online, 2001)
WEEK #13
Sun 1 May
Documentary: So where do we come from? Auckland: Curious Pictures (MNet). 2004.
Heidi Grunebaum and Steven Robins. "Crossing the Colour(ed) Line: Mediating the
Ambiguities of Belonging and Identity." pp. 159-172 ed. Zimitri Erasmus, Coloured by History,
Shaped by Place: New Perspectives on Coloured Identities in Cape Town. (Cape Town: Kwela
Books and South African History Online, 2001).
Documentary: “Tomorrow’s America” Matters of Race
http://www.pbs.org/mattersofrace/index.shtml
Wed 4 May
Discuss US/SAfr post-racial identities – do differences outweigh similarities?
Matters of Race Teacher’s Guide (on website): consider pedagogical orientation, objectives, and
implications.
WEEK #14
Sun 8 May
Cape Town: Tales of a Colour’d City. (dir. Thulani Mokoena, 2000).
Discussion & Dinner