230226 IAS MA Betreuungsseminar: "Race and the Americas" (S) (WiSe 2014/2015)

This introductory course to Inter-American studies critically engages the American Hemisphere which is also the object of study of Americanists in the fields of American, New American, Latin American, Hemispheric studies but, some may argue, not necessarily the subject matter of Americanists working in the field of American American studies! From a historical perspective, we will inevitably address rhetorical issues, or what Bell Chevigny and Gari Laguardia have called continental “rhetorical malpractice,” and attempt to disentangle/grasp the unique and/or not so unique quality of Americanness of this territory. Some of the questions leading our discussions will be: What is in the name America? Who is truly or is not truly American in the Americas? Who establishes and/or confers the right to be American to the inhabitants of the American continent/the Americas?

Further, considering that the concept of ‘race’ (and racism) is tightly connected to struggles for economic control, control of authority, gender and sexuality, knowledge and subjectivity, this course engages a notion that since the discovery and the colonization of the American Hemisphere has been deployed to classify human beings and to disqualify Indigenous populations and Blacks but also other mixed-race peoples as inferior in the continental strive for ‘whiteness’. Since ‘race’ is not only instrumental to demobilize peoples but also to racialize cultures, languages, knowledges, ways of knowing, religions, politics, and economies as unmodern, insufficient, exotic or inferior, in groups projects, students will be encouraged to examine the impact that ‘race’ and racism have had on the constitution of hemispheric and national identities and the production of cultures in the Americas at a historical juncture when some suggest that in an increasingly globalized world we are moving or have already moved beyond race. Some of the theorists this course will engage include Pierre Bourdieu, Enrique Dussel, Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, María Lugones, Loïc Wanguart.

A Class Reader will be uploaded into the Stud. IP.

Students must have read all texts before the seminar starts.

Bibliography

Required Reading for the Begleitseminar:

Students are also strongly advised to start reading these (long) books to their earliest convenience

- Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America. London: Profile Books, 2009.
- Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Penguin, 2007.
- Robinson, William I. Latin America and Global capitalism: A Critical Globalization Perspective. Baltimore: The John Hopkins UP, 2008.
- Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: First Herpel perennial Modern Classics, 2010.

The books are available at the library course reserve.