GD, 3 credits
Race & Diversity courses develop a
sophisticated understanding of race and racism as dynamic concepts,
pointing to the ways in which race intersects with other group
identifications such as gender, class, ethnicity, religion, age,
sexual orientation or disability.
Race & Diversity courses are intended to
teach students how to:
- Understand the relationships among diversity,
justice and power;
- Investigate the various forms race and racism
has taken in different places and times;
- Discuss race matters with diverse others in
relation to personal experience.
Select Once Course
African American Theater
Classics
Theater 0841
In part because of its development, initially, as
a consequence of enslavement, African American theater is both
entertaining and potentially volatile. We will look at some of the
most important African American plays from the late 1700's through
to the present, and explore the problems, contestations and the
nature of race, class, and gender as exemplified in these dramatic
texts. From Ira Aldridge's The Black Doctor in 1847, through to
August Wilson's Radio Golf (2007), we will investigate the
historical emergence and institutionalization of race thinking and
practice on the American stage. As we consider this span of
performance literature, we will analyze debates about race and
social justice, investigate the collaborative nature of theater and
develop oratory skills in provocative discussions.
African Americans and the Law: Weapon or
Tool?
Legal Studies 0803
Learn about the experience of African Americans
through the lens of the US legal system. US law, which first
defined African Americans as less than human, eventually declared
discrimination illegal, and remains both an expression and an
instrument of change at the intersection of race and equality. As
you study this evolution, you will reflect on relevant current
events, and explore your own responses to the kind of everyday
encounters that continually arise in our pluralistic society. Can
race be used as a factor in hiring, in college admissions? Is race
a factor for you in dating, marriage, adoption? We explore issues
like these on both broad social and personal dimensions.
Art, Race & the American
Experience
Paintings of the New Frontier and 19th century
folk art, the Harlem Renaissance and New Deal photography, Chicano
murals and the art activism of the Civil Rights Movement, the
digital spaces occupied by activist groups on the Internet--in the
struggle to understand the relation between self and other, artists
have critically engaged with the images that define our common
sense of belonging—images that saturate the public sphere via
mass media, advertising, textbooks, museums, and shopping malls.
While taking a close look at individual artists and movements, we
will locate them within their respective contexts, with the
ultimate goal of finding ways of adequately imagine and image an
American identity today.
Tourism & Hospitality Management, 0827
Are we really living in a melting pot? How
important are the differences and similarities among individuals?
The purpose of this course will be to focus on a variety of issues
related to the nature of personal and cultural identify within a
diverse American society. Specifically, this course will explore
critical factors that shape one's place or standing in society
(e.g., race, disability, age, gender, and sexuality). The meaning
and significance of these dimensions will be explored as they
relate to the societal and technological complexities of the 21st
Century. The best practice and research in racism, inequality, and
social injustice in industries such as sport, leisure, tourism and
health care will be explored.
Embodying Pluralism
Dance 0828
How do dance and the arts represent diversity?
Were we humans "born to dance?" From everyday interactions to dance
theater to music videos, movement expresses human identity and
difference. Through a variety of media, we will explore these
themes in relation to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other
constructions that form our perceptions of self and others.
Embodying Pluralism combines dance and movement experiences with
reading, writing, discussion, and viewing of videos and live
performance. Classes and assignments emphasize active learning in
small groups.
Ethnicity and the Immigrant
Experience in the U.S.
Sociology
0835
How do immigrants learn to become American? How
does living an ethnic identity vary for different groups? When does
ethnicity become a chosen identity or an unwanted label? How do we
learn to value some aspects of ethnicity but not others? What are
markers of ethnicity? How do language, food, music, family and
community work to provide authenticity to the American immigrant
experience? What happens to ethnicity with assimilation to the
American way of life? Can ethnicity combat the tidal social
expectations to conform to the dominant culture? Using a variety of
written materials including novels that explore the ethnic identity
of different groups, this course raises questions about how
ethnicity and American identity are connected.
The History & Significance of Race in
America [I/II/III]
African-American Studies 0829, Anthropology 0829, Geography
& Urban Studies 0829, History 0829, Political Science 0829,
Sociology 0829
Why were relations between Native Americans and
whites violent almost from the beginning of European settlement?
How could slavery thrive in a society founded on the principle that
"all men are created equal"? How comparable were the experiences of
Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants, and why did people in the
early 20th century think of them as separate "races"? What were the
causes and consequences of Japanese Americans' internment in
military camps during World War II? Are today's Mexican immigrants
unique, or do they have something in common with earlier
immigrants? Using a variety of written sources and outstanding
documentaries, this course examines the racial diversity of America
and its enduring consequences.
Anthropology 0831, Critical
Languages 0831, History 0831, Italian 0831, Russian 0831, Sociology
0831
As a Temple student, you go to school and live in
a city full of immigrants. Perhaps your own relatives were
immigrants to the United States. But have you ever listened to
their stories? With an historical and sociological framework as a
basis, we will take an in-depth and more personal look at the
immigrant experience as expressed through the immigrants' own
voices in literature and film. Topics explored include:
assimilation, cultural identity and Americanization, exploitation
and the American Dream, ethnic communities, gender, discrimination
and stereotyping.
Politics of Identity in
America
History 0832, Political Science 0832, Sociology 0832
Gay or straight. Black or white. Male or female.
What do these different group identities mean to Americans? How do
they influence our politics? Should we celebrate or downplay our
diversity? This course explores how we think about others and
ourselves as members of different groups and what consequences it
has for how we treat one another. Our fundamental social identities
can be a source of power or of powerlessness, a justification for
inequality or for bold social reform. Students learn about the
importance of race, class, gender and sexual orientation across a
variety of important contexts, such as the family, workplace,
schools, and popular culture and the implications these identities
have on our daily lives.
Film & Media Arts 0843
Movies have played a central role in how we
understand race, racial categories, and ethnic cultural identities.
We will study Hollywood's evolving portrayal of African-Americans,
Asian-Americans and ethnic groups like Latinos and
Italian-Americans. From Edison's early films, through Birth of
Nation, and to the present, commercial cinema has denigrated
Americans of color and stereotyped its ethnic groups. How are
stereotypes built up on century-old cinematic traditions and how do
they function today? What self-images have minority filmmakers
presented as an alternative to mainstream views? In addition to
looking at the critiques, we look at more positive aspects of
ethnic and racial images and examine the ways that these images
speak to the history of the nation as a whole.
Race & Identity in
Judaism
Jewish Studies 0802, Religion
0802
Investigate the relationship between race and
Judaism from Judaism's early period through today, looking both at
how Jews have understood their own racial identity and how others
have understood Jews' racial identity. You will explore the idea of
racial identity in Judaism in order to examine the complex network
of connections between racism and anti-Semitism, as you read
primary and secondary texts in Jewish philosophy and history and in
the study of race and racism. We hope to illuminate these complex
issues as well as to engage with them on a personal and political
level, examining the relationship between issues of race, religion,
identity, and social justice and injustice, and inquiring into how
we, as informed citizens in a global society, can affect change for
the better.
Race & Poverty in the
Americas [I/II]
Anthropology 0833, Latin American Studies 0833, Religion 0833,
Sociology 0833
The transatlantic slave trade was one of the most
brutal and momentous experiences in human history. Attitudes toward
Latino, Caribbean, African, and Asian immigrants in the United
States today can only be fully understood in the contexts of
slavery and the "structural racism," "symbolic violence" (not to
mention outright physical violence), and social inequalities that
slavery has spawned throughout the region. Although focusing
primarily on the United States, we will also study the present
entanglements of poverty and race in Brazil, Haiti, and other
selected nations of "The New World," placing the US (and
Philadelphia in particular) experience in this historical
context.
Race in the Ancient
Mediterranean
Green & Roman Classics 0804
Learn about ancient thinking about race and
ethnicity and how ancient thinking remains current and influential
today. Investigate how categories of race and ethnicity are
presented in the literature and artistic works of Greece and Rome.
Our case studies will pay particular attention to such concepts as:
notions of racial formation and racial origins; ancient theories of
ethnic superiority; and linguistic, religious and cultural
differentiation as a basis for ethnic differentiation. We will also
examine ancient racism through the prism of a variety of social
processes in antiquity: slavery, trade and colonization,
migrations, imperialism, assimilation, native revolts, and
genocide.
Race on the Stage
Theater 0842
A unique taste of artistic diversity, this course
combines traditional and interdisciplinary content with the rich
experience of "live art." Learn how conventions of the past
contribute to arts production and the dramatic presentation of
race, gender, sexuality, class and disability today, and how those
presentations continue to inform notions of identity. As you read
classic and contemporary dramatic texts and critically analyze
actual performances, you will be looking at diversity from multiple
perspectives and acquiring the kind of understanding of
"difference" and "tolerance" that will prepare you to live and work
in a global world.
Representing Race [I/II]
African-American Studies 0834, Anthropology 0834, English 0834,
History 0834
From classical Greece and Rome, who saw
themselves under siege by the "barbarian hords," to contemporary
America and its war on "Islamic extremism," from The Birth of a
Nation to Alien Nation, Western societies have
repeatedly represented a particular group of people as a threat to
civilization. This course will examine a wide range of
representations of non-Western people and cultures in film,
literature, scientific and legal writings, popular culture, and
artistic expression. What is behind this impulse to divide the
world into "us" and "them"? How is it bound up with our
understanding of race and racial difference? And what happens when
the "barbarian hords" talk back?
