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History 512:111: Race, Place and Space in American History
MW 8 (7:40-9:00 PM ) HHA2 https://sakai.rutgers.edu/portal
Professor Mia Bay
Office Hours:
mbay@rci.rutgers.edu
Course Description
This course provides with a historical introduction to America’s racial and ethnic
groupings by examining the social, spatial and historical forces that have defined these
groups. Weekly lectures and readings trace American racial formations, identities and
experiences from the age of Columbus to the present day. Following the work of
historians and geographers who emphasis the importance of space and place in
constructions of racial and ethnic identity, most of the class readings chart the evolution
of such identities within specific regions or communities.
Early readings illuminate the origins of categories such as “white,” black, “Native
American” and “Asian” by exploring the colonial encounters in which these identities
first took shape; while later readings trace how these identities have been maintained
and/or changed over time.
Less a product of racial attitudes than of economic and political interests, early American
conceptions of race first took shape amidst contests over land and labor that pitted
European immigrants against the indigenous peoples of North America, and ultimately
led to the development of racial slavery. Colonial legal distinctions between Christians
and Heathens were supplanted by legislation that defined people by race and ethnicity.
Over time these distinctions were reinforced by a variety of other forces. Distinctive from
place to place, America’s racial and ethnic groupings have been shaped and reshaped by
regional economies such as the slave South, political initiatives such as Indian Removal
and Chinese Exclusion Acts, a changing national immigration policy, and sexual and
social intermixture and assimilation. Course readings will examine the links between
race, region, labor, law, immigration, politics, sexuality and the construction and
character of racialized spaces and places in America.
Readings and Requirements
Weekly readings for this course include five short books, as well as a selection of book
chapters and articles available on Sakai. Weekly readings will normally total no more
than 100 pages; and all assigned reading must be completed before class. In addition to
doing all the reading, over the course of the semester the students will also be asked to
complete six discussion comments (see discussion assignments section below) and three
papers. Occasional quizzes may be used to open discussions, and will count toward
attendance. Grades will be divided as follows.
Course Grade
The course grade will be divided as follows: the first paper will count for 15% of the final
grade; the second and third papers will comprise 25% each; and participation and
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attendance will make up the remaining 35%. Additionally, your grade will be determined
by your performance on the reading assignments, as described below. Students must
complete all course work in order to pass the course.
Discussion Assignments
To facilitate discussion, one-page (200-word) comments on the reading are due on
designated “DISCUSSION” days. Informal written assignments, your comments can be
hand written or typed and should summarize and discuss the assigned discussion reading.
There are eight discussion days; and you must submit written responses to the readings
on six of those days (ie. you are allowed to miss two). Your comments will be graded
with a check (if completed and focused on the readings), a check plus (if particularly
well done) or a check minus (if barely passable). An extraordinarily good record on the
comments (many check-pluses) will raise your course grade by half a grade (from "B" to
"B+," for example). Barely passable comments (many check-minuses) will lower your
grade by ONE FULL GRADE (from "B" to "C," for example.) Turning in less than eight
comments will lower your final grade by up to TWO FULL GRADES (from "B" to "D,"
for example.) Late comments will not be accepted (except in the case of excused
absences).
All papers and discussion assignments should be original, as indicated in the Rutgers
University Policy on Academic Integrity for Undergraduate and Graduate Students
http://history.rutgers.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=109&Itemid=1
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Booklist
T.H. Breen, Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore (1892).
Stephanie Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the
Plantation South (University of North Carolina Press, 1982)
Julie Otsaka, When the Emperor was Divine (Penguin Books, 2002)
Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial
Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. ISBN 0393052133 W. W. Norton &
Company, 2005.
Jennifer Ritterhouse, Growing Up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern Children
Learned Segregation (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
SCHEDULE
Week 1: January 18: Introduction
Don Mitchell, “A Place for Everyone: Cultural Geographies of Race” in Cultural
Geography: An Introduction, 230-258: Sakai.
Week 2 World’s Collide: Race, Place and Conquest
January 22 : Looking for a New Place in an Old World: Columbus
Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise, Selections: Sakai..
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January 25: Discussion
The Letter of Columbus to Luis de Sant Angel Announcing His Discovery (1493)
http://www.bartleby.com/43/2.html; Amerigo Vespucci’s Account of His First
Voyage (1497) http://www.bartleby.com/43/3.html
Discussion Assignment # 1: Draw on the work of Kirkpatrick Sale and Don
Mitchell to analyze Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci’s presentation
of America’s indigenous people. Your discussion should consider what role, if
any, that race, space and place play in shaping in the two explorers’ responses the
native peoples they meet, and what other factors might have influenced their
descriptions of these groups
Week 3, Race, Place and Space in the Settlement of the New World
January 30: Displacing the Gods
Camilla Townsend, "Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest
of Mexico," The American Historical Review June 2003
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3523080
February 1: New World, New Peoples
Calloway, Colin G. New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of
Early America. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. excerpt
Mary Rowlandson, The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs.
Mary Rowlandson (1682)
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/rownarr.html
Discussion Comment # 2: Explore the role of religious differences in shaping
early encounters between Europeans and indigenous peoples.
Week 4 Land, Labor and Slavery
February 6: Film Race: The History of an Illusion, 2.
Wolfe, Patrick. “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race.”
The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (June 2001): 866-905.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2692330
February 8: Slavery and Freedom in the Virginia Colony
T.H Breen, Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore,
1640-1676 (Oxford University Press, 1982)
Week 5: The White Republic
February 13: Defining the Boundaries of Whiteness
Matthew Frye Jacobsen Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants
and the Alchemy of Race 13-59
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February 15: The White and the Red
Nancy Shoemaker, “How the Indians Became Red,” The American Historical
ReviewVol. 102, No. 3 (Jun., 1997), pp. 625-644; URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2171504
1st paper due
Week 6: Containment and Removal
February 20: The Geography of Removal
Mary Young, “The Cherokee Nation: Mirror of the Republic” American
Quarterly Vol. 33, No. 5, Special Issue: American Culture and the American
Frontier (Winter, 1981), pp. 502-524 URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2712800
Patrick Minges, Beneath the Underdog, Race, Religion and the Trail of Tears,
The American Indian Quarterly 25:3 (Summer 2001).
https://login.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/log
in.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=7088205&site=ehost-live
February 22: Geography of Slavery
Stephanie Camp, Closer to Freedom, 12-92
Rebecca Ginsburg, “Freedom and the Slave Landscape,” Landscape Journal
(2007), 36-44.
http://web.mac.com/rebeccaginsburg/iWeb/rgwebsite/CV_files/Freedom%20and
%20the%20Slave%20Landscape.pdf
Discussion Comment #3 Draw on this week’s readings to discuss why blacks and
Indians were treated very differently in the antebellum South. To what extent did
racial ideas about each group shape these histories?
Week 7: Place and Labor in Emancipation in Era
February 27: The Geography of Freedom
Stephanie Camp, Closer to Freedom, 93-138
February 29: The Persistence of Unfree Labor
Jung, Moon-Ho: Outlawing " Coolies" : Race, Nation, and Empire in the Age of
Emancipation
American Quarterly (American Studies Assn) (Baltimore, MD) (57:3) [Sep 2005]
http://gateway.proquest.com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.882003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:lionus&rft_id=xri:lion:ft:abell:R03606939:0
The Chinese Exclusion Act
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/asian_voices/voices_display.cfm?id=25
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Discussion Comment #4 TBA
Week 8: Race, Place and Immigration in the Age of Emancipation
March 5: Whiteness in an Exclusionary Era
Webb, Clive. “The Lynching of Sicilian Immigrants in the American South,
18886-1910.” American Nineteenth Century History 3, no. 1 (Spring 2002 ): 45.
https://login.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/log
in.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=7406996&site=ehost-live
Can Indians Become Citizens?
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/asian_voices/voices_display.cfm?id=39
March 7: Film: They Came for Good: A History of the Jews in America:
Taking Root 1820-1880
Eric L. Goldstein, “A Different Blood Flows in Our Veins: Race and Jewish Self
Definition in the Nineteenth-Century American Jewish History 85.1 (1997) 29-55
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/journals/american_jewish_history/
v085/85.1goldstein.html
March 10-18
Break
Week 9: March 19: The Solid South
March 19 Film: The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
March 21: The Segregated Origins of Social Security
Jennifer Ritterhouse, Growing up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern
Children Learned Segregation (University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 22-144
Week 10 Interzones
March 26: Race, Sex and Urbanization
Mumford, Kevin J. “Homosex Changes: Race, Cultural Geography, and the
Emergence of the Gay.” American Quarterly 48, no. 3 (September 1996): 395414. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30041687
March 28: Discussion of Ritterhouse
Jennifer Ritterhouse, Growing up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern
Children Learned Segregation (University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 149237
2nd Paper
Week 11, Race and War:
April 2: Film: Unfinished Business - The Japanese-American Internment Cases (2005)
Julie Otsaka, When the Emperor Was Divine (Penguin Books, 2002)
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April 4: The Enemy at Home
Discussion Comment # 5: Analyse the racial status of the Japanese in Otsaka’s
novel and the film Children of the Camps? Are they similar, and what do they say
about race, space and place?
Week 12: Defining the Boundaries of America
April 9: Race Space and Place During World War II
April 11: Who Assimilates?: Federal Policy
Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White 1-112
Week 13: American Apartheid
April 16: Race and Residence Film: Race History of an Illusion 3
Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White 112-172
Sacks, K.B. (1994) How did Jews become white folks?, in Gregory, S. and
Sanjek, R. (eds) Race. Brunswick, NJ: New Rutgers University Press, pp. 78–110
April 18: Race, Space and Place and the Civil Rights Revolution
3rd paper Due
Week 14: Race, Class, Gender and Geography
April 23: New Immigrants: New Races
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. “From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities
in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor.” Signs 18, no. 1 (Autumn
1992): 1-43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174725
April 25: The Future of Race
Kevin Cruse, “The Politics of Race and Public Space: Desegregation,
Privatization and the Tax Revolt in Atlanta,” in Other Souths: Diversity and
Difference in the U.S. South, Pippa Holloway, ed. (University of Georgia Press,
Reconstruction to the Present
2008): 381-407.
Malcom Gladwell, Black Like Them, the New Yorker, April 29, 1996
http://www.gladwell.com/1996/1996_04_29_a_black.htm
Discussion Comment # 6: Write a one page comment discussing how this week’s
readings to reflect on the role of class, gender and/or geography in the production
of racial identities.
Week 15: Race, Space and Place Today
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April 30: Final Thoughts
Forman, Murray. “: Race, Space and Place in Rap Music.” Popular Music 19, no.
01 (2000): 65-90.
http://journals.cambridge.org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/action/displayFulltext?ty
pe=1&fid=61725&jid=&volumeId=&issueId=01&aid=61724&bodyId=&member
shipNumber=&societyETOCSession=
Discussion Comment #7: Use Forman’s article to think about race, psace and
place in contemporary popular culture.