Objectives- Understand the importance of race in the formation of societies in the Americas, through reading secondary and primary texts. - Understand the importance of race for the formation of relationships between individuals. - Outline a topic for research and make a survey of existing work in the field. - Locate and survey sources relevant to the work proposed for MA in History of Race module essays, and for the dissertation (library, archival, dataset, microform, picture, film, literary, the evidence of material culture, etc).
Academic titleMA in the History of Race in the Americas
Course descriptionEssential Information This MA programme invites students to consider the history of race and the construction of ethnic identities in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, from the colonial period to the present day. It focuses on indigenous peoples, Africans and their descendants, relations with European Americans and with each other. The course will familiarise students with key texts in the primary and secondary literature, offer critical approaches to theories of race and ethnicity as they relate to the Americas, and provide a framework for more specialised research in the dissertation. Newcomers to the history of the region will acquire a firm grounding in a core area of the social and cultural history of the Americas.
Course Outline All students take a core module, ‘Race in the Americas: Themes and Problems’ in Term One, and one of the following options in Term Two. Not all will be available in any given year.
Options:
- Race, History and Nation in Mexico (Dr Earle)
- Perceptions of Race in the Antebellum U.S. South (Dr Lockley)
- Slave Resistance and Post-Emancipation Rebellions (Professor Heuman)
- Race in the ‘New’ Cinema in Latin America (Professor King)
- Race, Class and Jazz (Dr Fagge)
- Europeans and Indians in Early Colonial America (Professor McFarlane)
- Ethnicity and Citizenship in 19th and 20th century Latin America (Dr Thomson)
- Visualising Race and Gender in 20th-century American Culture (Dr Smyth)
All Students take the ‘Theory, Skill and Method’ module.