Race, Ethnicity and Gender in North America (UFR Études Anglophones)

This course is meant to expose students to the history of the central concept of race in the United States and the Caribbean over a long period, from the rise of slavery as a social system in the early 18th century to emancipation and post-emancipation societies. We will study the emergence of racial discrimination against people of African descent in the late 18th century and their various responses, from intellectual arguments to organized communities with “racial” theories of their own. While Native Americans also suffered from discrimination in the pre-Civil War period, their history is different and a class will be devoted to how they were viewed by white Americans in the antebellum period in the United States. The following sessions will be devoted to conflicts and controversies over racial inequalities but also over changing definitions of what race is and what it does to American and Caribbean societies. The racial dynamics in the English-and French/Creole[1]speaking Caribbean will be addressed so as to broaden the scope of our discussions, and inscribe the United States in the Black Atlantic.