NEH Enduring Questions Course on "What Is Racial Difference?"

FAIN: AQ-50712-12

Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA 02481-8203)
Cord James Whitaker (Project Director: September 2011 to October 2017)

The development of an undergraduate course on the question, What is racial difference?

Cord Whitaker, assistant professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, develops a course to investigate the question of racial difference - whether racial difference is best understood as linguistic, physical, geographic, religious, or biological. Through readings and discussions concerned with questions about the nature of race, students explore how racial concepts are perceived and used. Furthermore, they contextualize and scrutinize notions of race through questions such as: Are ideas about human difference political? Are they manifestations of self-interest on the part of humans who stand to benefit from them? Or do they have some less practical origin? Course readings are divided into units that focus on physical difference, geographical difference, religious difference, and definitions of race. Readings include Aristotle's Politics, Augustine's City of God, Avicenna's Canon of Medicine, Pliny the Elder's Natural History, Bartholomaeus Anglicus's On the Properties of Things, Thomas More's Utopia, Averroes' Faith and Reason in Islam, Cabez de Vaca's La Relación, René Girard's Scapegoat, Sir Walter Raleigh's Discovery of Guiana, Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, Charles Darwin's Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal, Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, Kwame Anthony Appiah's Ethics of Identity, Martin Bernal's Black Athena together with Mary Lefkowitz's critique of the book, and Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark. The introduction of this course lends momentum to the creation of an interdisciplinary center for the study of race and ethnicity at UNH.

Associated Products

What is Racial Difference? (Web Resource)
Title: What is Racial Difference?
Author: Cord Whitaker and Wellesley College English 291
Abstract: What Is Racial Difference? is a blog for asking what race consists of: is it color? culture? geography? This is a site for asking what race does: does it produce division and strife? define and maintain communities? create and uphold structures of inequality? provide a platform for passing down rituals and values? This is a site for examining how race functions in daily life: does race affect a person’s perception of herself? her educational decisions? his professional performance, whether positively or negatively? This is a site for reflecting on where race operates: is race with us at the grocery store? at the academic conference? Contributors include students in Professor Cord Whitaker’s What Is Racial Difference? [English 291] at Wellesley College and professional scholars who think about race from a variety of disciplinary perspectives: English, French, Spanish, History, Biology, Genetics, Psychology, Anthropology, Political Science, etc. To answer ‘What is race?’ is to deal with a vast and varied array of evidence and a variety of analytical approaches that varies even more. This blog’s objective is to bring evidence and approaches—especially those that may be less well known—to light and into conversation.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://whatisracialdifference.com

English 291: What Is Racial Difference? (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: English 291: What Is Racial Difference?
Author: Cord J. Whitaker
Abstract: Is Race a modern problem? Is it medieval? Is it ancient? Is Race visual? Is it textual? Is it scientific? Is it religious? Is Race real? Is it imaginary? Is Race nothing? Is Race everything? These and similar questions inform readings, discussion, and writing in English 291. Together, we explore the nature of race from classical antiquity through modern day in philosophy, science, art, and literature. Together, we explore the variety of disciplinary approaches to the study of race. We also consider the historical, social, and economic pressures that have consolidated the idea of race. Together, we ask: what is racial difference? The course is divided into four units, reflecting three major elements of racial discourse: physical difference, geographical difference, and religious difference, along with a unit dedicated to our main objective: to develop a working definition of race.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://whatisracialdifference.com
Audience: Undergraduate

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