Race/Gender in Southern History

Catalog description

Race and Gender in Southern History: In this seminar, we will explore how the interplay of gender, class, labor, and race has impacted southern history at crucial moments. Students will study an Afro-Cherokee family in the early 1800s, the prevalence of white women as enslavers in the antebellum era, labor organizing in Florida during Jim Crow, and a case of sexual assault at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. How have southerners’ identities shaped political, economic, and social conflicts in the past? What role have race and gender played in different southerners’ fights against injustice? How have these struggles shaped the present? Through reading books, class discussions, and analyzing online archives, students will explore these questions and more. No prerequisite. (Offered every other fall semester.)