Comparative Race Studies Courses (CRPC)

Through the Comparative Race Studies Program (CRPC), the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture (CSRPC) provides students interested in the study of race and racialized ethnic groups with the opportunity to take courses and participate in programs that illustrate how race and ethnicity and their structural manifestations impact and shape our lives on a daily basis. CSRPC is an interdisciplinary research institution dedicated to promoting engaged scholarship and debate around the topics of race and ethnicity. The focus of CRPC is to expand the study of race and racialized ethnic groups beyond the black/white paradigm and to promote the study of race and processes of racialization in comparative and transnational frameworks.


New Courses

Spring 2007

CRPC 28121/38121 (=HIST 28501/38501) THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

This course is designed to be both an introduction to the field as well as an opportunity to examine the forty-year history of scholarship in Asian American studies and its future direction.  During the quarter, we will familiarize ourselves with some of the classic texts in Asian American studies (including documentary films), identifying various approaches and debates, while also carefully considering historical contexts in which the works were produced.  Readings will alternate between historical narrative and theoretical works meant to provide the tools with which to think about how historical narratives are constructed.  While tracing the development of the field from its beginnings in the late 1960s to the present, the course will also trace the 150-year history of Asians in the United States and encourage thoughtful discussion on related topics such as race, representation, immigration, gender, class, identity, community and politics.  Theresa Mah

CRPC 25500 (=CMST 25502, HIST 27104) WORLDS FAIRS AND MUSEUMS: THE POLITICS OF DISPLAY

This course traces the history of exhibition practices and the logics of display of the North American museum. Starting with the museum’s origins in world’s fairs and expositions in the end of the nineteenth century, we will investigate past and present exhibition practices and modes of representation from a variety of sites in Chicago such as the Columbian Exposition of 1893 and the Field Museum of Natural History. We will examine how traditional museum culture is often simultaneously associated with the legacy of the scientific components of the nineteenth century world’s fairs (theories of racial, material and industrial progress) while also distinguished from its more popular forms of amusement (attractions such as “live displays” and the overt spectacle of the showmen barkers). We will also take an in-depth look into how diverse museological spaces -- a First Nations Cultural Center, a Mexican Fine Arts Cultural Center and a traveling Festival -- can be seen as what James Clifford refers to as contact zones – sites where culturally, geographically and historically separated peoples, cultures and forms of knowledge come into contact with each other, forging differing kinds of relations and levels of engagement. Theresa Scandiffio

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CRPC 20703 (=HIST 27005, LACS 20703) RACIALIZATION IN POSTEMANCIPATION US AND BRAZIL

This course will consider the processes in which various components of society have been racialized, i.e. characterized as embodying certain racial meanings, symbolisms, or identities.  We will examine the ways in which these processes of racialization have permeated and shaped the human experience in the largest ex-slavocracies of the Americans—the United States and Brazil.  As Brazilian and US race relations have historically been mutually influential, the two nations forge a natural partnership for our survey of racialization in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Jessica Graham

CRPC 28702 (=SOCI 20172) IMMIGRATION AND THE NEW SECOND GENERATION

Focusing on “the new second generation” (the adult children of Asian, Latino, and Black immigrants), this course examines their experiences of straddling two cultures and growing up American.  This course will cover topics such as assimilation, language and bilingualism, racial and ethnic identities, education, bicultural conflicts, interracial marriage, multiracial identities, and America’s changing color lines. Jennifer Lee

CRPC 28106 (=ANTH 20930, GNDR 24802) RACE & SEXUAL POLITICS IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

This course will explore the complex ways in which sexuality figures in South Africa’s transition and continues to be intimately linked to renegotiations of race.  We will consider, for example, how sexuality features in some of the primary institutions of the national transition as well as transformations in taxonomies of sex and identity, the embeddedness of sexuality in geography and space, and the increasingly pressing issues of HIV/AIDS and violence. Jennifer Spruill

CRPC 22810 (=ENGL 22810, LACS 22810) 19th C. LATINO-CARIBBEAN WRITERS

This course will examine the literature, politics, and culture of Cuban and Puerto Rican writers who lived in the US during the late 19th century.  We will close-read texts by writers such as Jose Marti, Eugenio Maria de Hostos, Arturo Schomburg, Felix Varela, and Panchin Marin all of whom took active part in establishing a transatlantic network that promoted Spanish Caribbean liberation through a variety of US based print media.  Through positioning poetry, political treatise, essays, and memoir, alongside historical events such as the American Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the Ten Years War, and the Spanish American War, we will critically interrogate the role of the United States in the literature and politics of late 19th century Cuba and Puerto Rico.  Particular attention will be paid to examining key categories of race, revolution, and nation-formation. Salinda Lewis

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CRPC 28050 (=LACS 28050, HIST 26503) US LATINA AND LATINO HISTORY

This course will introduce students to the central questions, themes, and debates in U.S. Latina and Latino history.  Our principal objective will be to understand the diversity and complexity of Latina and Latino life from the colonial period to present.  We will survey works in social, political, and labor history to examine the structural and cultural forces shaping the histories of communities across time, region, and national/ethnic identifications.  We will study the legacies of conquest, imperialism, and colonization; processes of (im)migration and labor market participation; and the predicaments of citizenship and Americanization.  We will also focus on identity and community formation; civic action and social movements; and the cultural politics surrounding family life, gender relations, and sexuality.  Our inquiry will conclude with contemporary deliberations over the possibilities and challenges of Latinidad.  Eduardo Contreras

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CRPC 24003 (=HIST 24003, ANTH 24003, SOSC 24003) COLONIZATIONS 3

Part of the three-quarter Colonizations sequence, which meets the general educations requirement in civilizations studies. The third quarter considers the processes and consequences of decolonization both in the newly independent nations and the former colonial powers.Colonizations 3 may be taken as an elective and does not require Colonizations 1 and 2 as prerequisites.  Dipesh Chakrobarty, Leora Auslander

For a complete listing of our Spring Quarter courses, including cross-listings and regularly-offered courses, please see: http://timeschedules.uchicago.edu/view.cfm?dept=CRPC&term=71