Identity in the American Imagination

Catalog description

This course explores the ways that racial identity has been experienced, represented, and contested throughout American history, from Sally Hemings in the eighteenth century to the contemporary lives of everyday people living in the twenty-first century. Engaging historical, legal, and literary texts and films, this course examines major historical transformations that have shaped our understanding of racial identity. This course also draws on other imaginative modes - including autobiography, memoir, photography, and music - to consider the ways that racial identity has been represented in American society. Most broadly, this course interrogates the problem of American identity and examines the interplay between racial identity and American identity. This course moves along both chronological and thematic axes to investigate the problems of racial mixture, mixed-race identity, racial passing, and racial performance across historical periods. Themes of ambiguous, hidden, and hybrid identity will be critical. This course will also explore the interplay of the problems of class, gender, and sexuality in the construction of racial identity.