Course Description
During the last century, Americans widely adopted the metaphor 'melting pot' to describe our hybrid society. Recently, we hear metaphors like 'salad' and 'quilt' with more frequency. Although each metaphor evokes a distinct outcome, they each more or less affirm that our society is based on egalitarian principles and the positive achievements of immigrants. But disenfranchised groups have constantly sought and continue to seek redress for (or autonomy from) their marginalized status in our stratified society. Critics have often asserted that the political-economic and cultural structures and processes that support the 'American Dream' reflect the interests of a narrowly-defined segment of our population, and that these structures and processes largely ignore or disfigure key differences based on race, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, gender, or class. This course examines this conflict at the heart of U.S. self-identification, analyzing the meanings and dilemmas of identity, governance, immigration, cultural difference and pluralism, inheritance, assimilation, civil rights, and the relationship between 'majority' and 'minority groups' that are reflected in this ever-increasingly hybrid and multicultural nation.
In the specific topics it addresses, this course has two major goals. First, from a disciplinary perspective, it introduces you to anthropological theories of corporate and individual identity formation, the maintenance of identity under conditions of culture contact, and the processes by which identity changes. The second is to introduce you to anthropological understandings of 'America,' focusing in particular on the socio-cultural identities, hybridities, and conflicts over 'assimilation' that characterize our society.
During the semester, we will address the following questions: What is the 'United States of America,' culturally-speaking? What forms of knowledge and meaning (scientific, 'popular,' narrative, artistic, etc.) do people in our multiracial and multiethnic society use to understand 'self' and 'other?' How have political, economic, cultural and social forces shaped meanings of race, ethnicity and cultural pluralism? How do American constructions of race and ethnicity compare with classification systems in other ethnically-hybrid societies? How are inequality, discrimination and conflict perceived, experienced, perpetuated and resisted in our stratified society? How did 'America' come to define itself as a society of 'white, middle class immigrants?' What are the meanings of 'whiteness?' What future(s) does our society imagine for individuals, groups, colors, and identities defined as 'other?'
While we will examine particular 'ethnic' and 'racial' communities (i.e., 'blacks,' 'whites,' 'latinos,' 'asians,' 'multiracial,' etc.), this course is not a catalog or survey of these groups and their 'cultures.' Rather, our goal is to examine the relationships and forms of knowledge that constitute, homogenize, resist, and transform these cultural categories and identities. Furthermore, even though we will analyze political debates like affirmative action and multiculturalism, the purpose of this course is not to provide policy solutions to the tensions surrounding ethnic identification, racism and racial conflict in the U.S. or elsewhere, but to encourage you to reflect critically upon the variable processes of social categorization, the construction of identities, forms of discrimination, sociocultural transformation, activism and your own position in these processes.
We will be exploring extremely sensitive and emotional topics in this course. It is of utmost importance that each of you makes a commitment to participate fully in this class and to respect the participation of others.
The following required texts are available for purchase at the University Store:
1. Berger (1999) White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
2. Gallagher (1999) Rethinking the Color Line: Readings in Race and Ethnicity. Mayfield.
3. Lutz and Collins (1993) Reading National Geographic. University of Chicago Press.
4. Passaro (1996) The Unequal Homeless: Men on the Streets, Women in Their Place. Routledge Press.