HIST 315 - Defining and Defying Difference: Race, Ethnicity, and Empire

From the origins of the British Empire in the sixteenth century, the encounter between Britons and colonial subjects demanded explanations of human difference. In this course, we will consider race and ethnicity as contingent and contested categories shaped by political and economic circumstances. Topics will include the international slave trade and abolition, caste and community in South Asia, color and class in the twentieth-century Caribbean, and immigration and multiculturalism in late twentieth-century Britain. Throughout we will pay attention to gender.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing and HUM 110
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): CRES 385
Not offered: 2024-25
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.