Critical Race Theory, Literary Studies, and Culture

Catalog description

This course investigates how power, language, history, and representation inform constructions of race and hierarchies of personhood. The focus is on scholarship by touchstone and emerging figures in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and overlapping fields such as gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial studies, diasporastudies, and legal studies as well as key concepts such as intersectionality, antiracism, and social justice. The course will prompt students to consider ways that the central ideas of this vibrant theoretical movement illuminate literature and, conversely, how literature illuminates it. It will engage CRT through a variety ofmediums, including film, music, archival material, and contemporary cultural production.