Anthropology of Racial Slavery

Catalog description

Examines the world-building and world-destroying structures produced from the transatlantic slave trade. While the primary focus is the formation of slavery in the United States, readings will also consider the place of Africa and Latin America in relation to the transatlantic slave trade. Fundamentally, the course introduces students to the numerous mechanisms used to maintain the being of the slave as slave through the law, political economy, criminal justice, and in the organization of political and social life. We will pay attention to the encounters slavery made possible between intersecting worlds and the concepts that underly this relationship between worlds: including debt, freedom, race, rights, the human, and value.