Race & Sex in American History

Catalog description

This course examines the interplay of race and sex in American history from contact through the 20th century, and the ways in which race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality converged. Formally, many factors, notably the law, worked to keep racial and ethnic groups in America from crossing sexual boundaries. In practice, those boundaries were quite permeable, and regularly breached and challenged. Course themes include the construction and maintenance of racial categories, the origins and power of racial stereotypes, the racialization of sex and the body, sexual intimacy and violence across racial lines, and the law as a tool to enforce sexual and racial boundaries. Receiving considerable attention will be how slavery, race, and racism shaped ideas and mores about sex. Topics explored include conquest and westward expansion, sexual exploitation of female slaves and free women of color; ‘passing’; sexual, racial and ethnic stereotypes; taboos about interracial relationships, their origins, and forms; anti-miscegenation laws; lynching; medicine, disease and race; and homosexuality. Given the nature of the subject matter, students may find some of the material uncomfortable and/or disturbing. Restriction: No Freshman. Offered every other year.