Explores the intersections of race and religion in the modern world, alongside a brief examination of possible racialization in the medieval period. As contemporary theorists of race and religion have demonstrated, religion serves as a means of racializing various human groupings, producing understandings of “peoplehood” with the goal of categorizing and marginalizing particular communities within the social body. This course exposes students to competing definitions of race and the ways in which race and religion co-constitute one another both historically and contemporarily. Diverse historical and cultural moments will be examined, including but not limited to, European colonial expansion, transatlantic slavery, nineteenth-century U.S. American understandings of race in relation to the Bible, and the racialization of Islam in contemporary U.S. culture and politics. Prerequisite: Race, Ethnicity, and Migration 185, Race, Ethnicity, and Migration 212, or relevant coursework in RE or RM, with consent of instructor. 1 unit - Hunt.

Explores key texts and debates in Middle Eastern and Islamic feminist studies in order to think about the politics of feminism, feminist subjectivity, and the relationship between feminism and modernity. Parochializes universalizing assumptions about feminism and women’s rights by focusing on the contributions of a non-Western feminist tradition. Asks critical questions about the transnational politics of translation, and the normative assumptions, aporias and exclusions that are constitutive of feminist thought and politics, with a particular attention to questions of tradition and of religion and secularism. Prerequisite: Feminist & Gender Studies 110 or Feminist & Gender Studies 114, and junior or senior standing. (Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement.) (Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.) 1 unit - Department.

How does the color line, as defined by W.E.B Du Bios, intersect, reify, and in many ways, define colonialism? How do our perceptions of race and ethnicity influence our positions? This course critically analyzes the history of racial identity formation and the theories of racial hierarchies from an Africana studies perspective. Particular emphasis will be placed on Black people’s lived experience, struggle, and agency for self-determination in South Africa and the USA. Students will engage with critical theories in race and ethnicity studies and examine how some of those theories inform and challenge present movements for social justice.

Popular critiques of capitalism are everywhere today—from presidential debate stages to the digital realms of TikTok and YouTube. But how exactly can we explain capitalism? How did it emerge, and how is it structured? Who or what maintains capitalism, and what role does race specifically play in it? The answers to these questions are not as straightforward as they may seem. Some scholars disagree as to whether race is even a constitutive element of capitalism. This interdisciplinary course reads critical theories on capitalism alongside its literary and cultural expressions in popular culture to understand how race intersects with capitalism. It traces famous theories on capitalism by thinkers like Karl Marx alongside an important tradition of radical scholarship on the intersections of race and capitalism by people like W.E.B. DuBois, C.L.R. James, Cedric Robinson, Eric Williams, Jodi Melamed, Nancy Leong, Patricia Hill Collins, Mark Chiang, Iyko Day, Lisa Lowe, and Jonathan Tran, among others. In doing so, it engages key concepts such as racial capitalism, late capitalism, identity capitalism, neoliberalism, feudalism, and techno-feudalism. To help situate these critical discourses, this class places theory in conversation with literary and cultural texts like film, television, and literature to see how filmmakers, writers, and artists have confronted capitalism in the name of social justice.