Fall 2022
AFST 120 Race and Racism Outside the U.S. – Professor Daniel Williams (6 credits)
In this course, we examine the ways that race structures difference and inequality in non-U.S. contexts with varying degrees of racial “diversity.” As a construct fundamentally grounded in white supremacy through encounters between Europe and its “Others,” race from its inception has been a global construct for organizing and stratifying human difference. Yet the specific ways that race is constructed varies across societies, with ethnicity and other related concepts of difference substituting for race. Foundational to this course will be how the notions of blackness and whiteness figure into the creation of racial categories, boundaries, and inequalities. Course topics include skin color stratification, “colorblindness,” ethnicity and nationhood, migration and citizenship, media representations, anti-blackness as a global phenomenon, transnational and global flows of racial ideas and categories, and social movements for racial justice.
SOAN 214 Neighborhoods and Cities: Inequalities and Identities – Professor Daniel Williams (6 credits)
Inequalities and identities are well understood yet too often disconnected from the context of space and place. In this class, we discuss the ways that neighborhoods and cities are sites of inequality as well as identity. Neighborhoods are linked to the amount of wealth we hold; the schools we attend; the goods, services, and resources we have access to; and who our neighbors are. Neighborhoods are also spaces where identities and community are created, claimed, and contested. They can also be sites of conflict as they change through gentrification or other processes that often reflect inequalities of power, resources, and status. In this course, special attention will be paid to how race, gender and sexuality, and immigration shape inequalities and identity in neighborhoods and cities. This course will also include an academic civic engagement component, collaborating with local communities in Minnesota.
Prerequisite: The department strongly recommends that Sociology/Anthropology 110 or 111 be taken prior to enrolling in courses numbered 200 or above.
DANC 172 Contemporary Experiments with Leslie Parker
Through an embodied exploration of ancestral memory, tracing and thought to increase physical range and capacity, we will engage movement within empathetic exchanges a a collaborative process. Open to all movers!
Spring 2023
AFST 220 Color, Class, and Status in Black America – Professor Daniel Williams (6 credits)
As a racial category and identity, “Black” is often treated in a homogenous, monolithic way, obscuring the internal diversity and inequality within the black population in the U.S. In this course, we consider the inequalities within black communities and the black population living in the U.S., historically and through to the present. “Colorism,” or skin tone stratification, represents one status linked to class and ranking in society; but does colorism matter more than other statuses to class? Class differences are in fact profound within black communities, and they are correlated to multiple social statuses–skin tone, immigrant status, national origin, and even political orientation. We will examine how these status, color, and class interact, and how they shape class relations and tensions, lived experience, and notions of authenticity (“blackness”) in everyday life and popular culture. Course topics include the Black middle class; education; neighborhood segregation; gender and sexuality; and media representations and popular culture.