RACE 2021 - Alana Lentin www.alanalentin/net/understandingrace - Alana lentin.net

UNDERSTANDING
  RACE 2021
      M A S T E R S O F R E S E A R C H
  W E S T E R N S Y D N E Y U N I V E R S I T Y

         T R A V E L   T R I P S   A N D   M O R E

                                                     Photo credit: AMA NSW

                   Alana Lentin
  www.alanalentin/net/understandingrace

NO          P L ACE                I S       E VE R
                  AS          B AD              AS      T HE Y
                      T E L L              YOU          I T ’ S
                      GOI NG                    T O       B E .

UNDERSTANDING
RACE
What is race? What is racism? How are they       Though race develops differently in different
related? Why do they continue to shape           contexts, it is best thought about through
social, political and economic relations well    relational readings that draw out both the
after the biological concept of race was         differences but also the similarities between
disproven? What are the links between race       places and times. This unit will draw on race
and colonialism and in Australia                 critical and decolonial texts to focus on race
particularly, the invasion and settlement of     as a modern idea that is shaped in the
Aboriginal land? How is race related to          contexts of colonialism, slavery, and persists
property? How do ideas of race become            in post-immigration multicultural societies.
embedded in state institutions and why do
they continue to shape disadvantage and
inequality?

Blogs and readings:                              This 13 week course is offered by Alana
alana lentin.net/understandingrace               Lentin as part of the Masters of Research at
@alanalentin                                     Western Sydney University.
#UnderstandingRace Padlet

WEEKLY
 SYLLABUS

Week 1: Working with and against

race

Week 2: Race, the social

construction of what?

Week 3: Race, the floating signifier

Week 4: Racialization & experience

Week 5: Race & Culture

Week 6: Engendering race

Week 7: Methodologies

Weeks 8: Whiteness and possession

Weeks 10 & 11: Race, coloniality,

indigeneity

Weeks 12 & 13: Racial capitalism

Week 14: Wrap-up

Most Readings can be accessed here by request

1: Working with and against
race
Main texts:
Alana Lentin. 2018. ‘Race/ in W. Outhwaite and S. Turner (eds.),
William Outhwaite amd Stephen Turner (eds). The Sage
Handbook of Political Sociology.

W.E.B. Du Bois. 1940. 'Chapter V: The Concept of Race', Dusk of
Dawn: Essay towards an autobiography of the race concept.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ways in:
Alana Lentin. 2008. Chapter 1. Racism, A Beginner's Guide. Oxford;
Oneworld.

Alana Lentin. 2015.'What Does race Do?', Ethnic and Racial
Studies. 38(8): 1401–1406.

Extras:
Jose Munoz. 2006. 'Feeling Brown, Feeling Down: Latina Affect, the
Performativity of Race, and the Depressive Position', Signs
31(3): 675-688.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun. 2009. 'Introduction: Race and/as
Technology; or, How to Do Things to Race,' Camera Obscura 24(1):
7–35

2: The social construction
of what?
Main texts:
Alana Lentin. 2020. 'Chapter 1: Race Beyond Social Construction,'
Why Race Still Matters. London: Polity Press.

El-Haj, Nadia Abu. 2007. ‘The Genetic Reinscription of Race.’
Annual Review of Anthropology 36 (1): 283–300.

Ways in:
Angela Saini. 2018. 'Chapter 5: Race Realists', Superior: The return
of race science. London: Penguin.

Extras:
M’Charek, Amade. 2013. ‘Beyond Fact or Fiction: On the Materiality
of Race in Practice.’ Cultural Anthropology 28 (3): 420–42.

Clarence C. Gravlee, 2009. 'How Race Becomes Biology:
Embodiment of Social Inequality, American Journal of Physical
Anthropology: 139: 47–57.

3. Race, the floating signifier

Main texts:
Introduction and Chapter 1, 'Race-the Sliding Signifier' of Stuart
Hall. 2017. The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation. Harvard:
Harvard UP.

Claire Alexander (2009) 'Stuart Hall and "Race"'. Cultural Studies
23(4): 457-482.

Ways in:
Alana Lentin. 2008. 'Chapter 2: The Experience of Racism.' Racism,
A Beginner's Guide. Oxford; Oneworld.

Extras:
Les Back and Maggie Tate. 2014. 'Telling About Racism: W.E.B. Du
Bois, Stuart Hall and Sociology's Reconstruction,' in Alana Lentin and
Wulf D. Hund (eds). Racism and Sociology. Berlin: Lit Verlag.

Video: 'Paul Gilroy and Ruth Wilson Gilmore / Stuart Hall: Selected
Writings on Race and Difference'

4. Racialization & Experience
Main texts:
Frantz Fanon. 1986 [1967]. 'Chapter 5: The Fact of Blackness'. 1986 [1967]. Black
Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann. London: Pluto Press.

Aileen Moreton-Robsinon. 2015. 'Chapter 7: Leesa's Story: White possession in the
workplace' The White Possessive: Property, power and Indigenous sovereignty.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ways in:
bell hooks. 1996. 'Black Beauty and Black Power: Internalized racism' Killing
Rage, Ending Racism. New York: Henry Holt.

Extras:
Lewis Gordon. 2015. 'Chapter 3: Living Experience, Embodying Possibility'. What
Fanon Said: A philosophocal introduction to his life and thought. New York:
Fordham University Press.

George Yancy. 2017. 'Chapter 1: Black Bodies and the Myth of a Postracial
America' Black Bodies, White Gazes: The continuing significance of race in
America. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

5. Race & Culture

Main texts:
Stuart Hall. 2017. 'Chapter 2: Ethnicity and Difference in Global Times', The
Fateful Triangle. Harvard: Harvard UP.

Frantz Fanon. 1967. 'II: Racism and Culture'. Toward the African Revolution.
trans. Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove Press.

Ways in:
Alana Lentin. 'Replacing ‘race’, historicizing ‘culture’ in multiculturalism',
Patterns of Prejudice 39(4): 379-396.

Extras:
Etienne Balibar. 1991. 'Is There a Neoracism?' Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous
Identities. London: Verso.

Glenn Coulthard. 2014. Chapter 1, 'The Politics of Recognition in Colonial
Contexts,' Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition.
University of Minnesota Press.

Lana Tatour. 2019. 'The culturalisation of indigeneity: the Palestinian-Bedouin
of the Naqab and indigenous rights'. The International Journal of Human
Rights, 23(10): 1569-1593

Podcast: Ann Laura Stoler, 'The Colonial Administration of Bodies and Space'

6. Engendering Race
Main texts:
Angela Davis. 1981. 'Chapter 1: The Legacy of Slavery: Standards for a New
Womanhood' Women, Race and Class.New York: Vintage Books.

Françoise Vergès. 2020. 'On Women and their Wombs: Capitalism,
Racialization, Feminism' The Wombs of Women: Race, Capital, Feminism.
Durham, NC: Duke UP.

Ways in:
Transcript: Broadly Speaking: Aileen Moreton-Robinson: 20th Anniversary of
Talkin’ Up to the White Woman

Patricia Hill Collins. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness,
and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge

Extras:
Katherine McKittrick. 2010. 'The Politics of Reading Sarah Baartman'. Mosaic: An
Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 43(2): 113-130.

Maria Lugones. 2010. 'Toward a Decolonial Feminism'. Hypatia 25(4).

7. Methodologies
Main texts:
Linda Tuhiwai Smith. 2012. ‘Chapter 10: Towards Developing Indigenous
Methodologies: Kaupapa Maori Research’, in Decolonizing Methodologies (2nd
ed.). London: Zed Books.

Aileen Moreton-Robinson. 2013. 'Towards an Australian Indigenous
Women's Standpoint Theory'. Australian Feminist Studies 28(78): 331-347,

Patricia Hill Collins. 2000. ‘Black Feminist Epistemology,' in Black Feminist
Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd
Ed. New York: Routledge

Ways in:
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Tukufu Zuberi. 2008. ‘Introduction: Towards a
Definition of White Logic and White Methods’, in White Logic, White Methods.
London: Rowman and Littlefield.

Extras:
Julietta Singh. 2018. Unthinking mastery: Dehumanism and decolonial
entanglements. Durham: Duke UP.

Aileen Moreton-Robinson. 2015. Introduction to Critical Indigenous Studies:
Engagements in First World Locations. University of Arizona Press.

Jo-Ann Archibald, Jenny Lee-Morgan and Jason De Santolo. 2019. 'Introduction',
Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology. London: Zed
Books.

Jason De Santolo. The Emergence of Yarnbar Jarngkurr from Indigenous
Homelands: A Creative Indigenous Methodology.

David T. Goldberg. 2015. ‘Racial Comparisons, Relational racisms: Some
thoughts on method’, in Karim Murji and John Solomos (eds.), Theories of
Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press: 251-262.

Nelson Maldonado-Torres. 2010. ‘The time and space of race: reflections on
David Theo Goldberg’s interrelational and comparative methodology’,
Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 44, No. 1.

Symposium on ‘Patricia Hill Collins Black Feminist Thought’, Ethnic and Racial
Studies 38(13), 2015.

Alana Lentin. 2014. ‘Postracial Silences: The Othering of Race in Europe’, in Wulf
D. Hund and Alana Lentin, Racism and Sociology. Berlin: Lit Verlag.

Aileen Moreton-Robinson. 2004. 'Chapter 6: Whiteness, epistemology and
Indigenous representation'. Whitening Race: Essays in social and cultural
criticism. AIATSIS: Aboriginal Studies Press.

8. Race, coloniality, indigeneity
.
    Main texts:
    Patrick Wolfe. 2016. 'Introduction' and 'Chapter 1: In Whole and In Part: The
    Racialisation of Indigenous People in Australia'. Traces of History:
    Elementary Structures of Race. London: Verso.

    Aileen Moreton-Robinson. 2009. 'Imagining the Good Indigenous Citizen:
    Race War and the Pathology of Patriarchal White Sovereignty'. Critical
    Indigenous Theory 15(2).

    J. Kēhaulani Kauanui. 2008. 'Chapter 1: Racialized Beneficiaries and
    Genealogical Descendants'. Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of
    Sovereignty and Indigeneity. Durham: Duke UP.

    Kim TallBear. 2013. 'Genomic articulations of indigeneity'. Social Studies of
    Science, 43(4), 509-533.

    Ways in
    Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. 2015. 'Chapter 2: Culture of Conquest'. An Indigenous
    Peoples' History of the United States. Boston Beacon Press.

    Debbie Bargallie. 2020. 'Chapter 1.' Unmasking the Racial Contract:
    Indigenous voices on racism in the Australian Public Service. AIATSIS.

    Extras
    Irene Watson. 2002. 'Buried Alive,' Law and Critique 13: 253–269, 2002.

    Jodi A. Byrd. 2018. '"Variations under Domestication”: Indigeneity and the
    Subject of Dispossession'. Social Text 36(2 (135)): 123–141.

.J. Kēhaulani Kauanui. 2016. “A Structure, Not an Event”: Settler Colonialism
and Enduring Indigeneity. Lateral 5.1

Aileen Moreton-Robinson. 2016. 'Race and Cultural Entrapment: Critical
Indigenous studies in the twenty-first century'. in A. Moreton-Robinson (ed.)
Critical Indigenous studies: Engagements in first world locations. University
of Arizona Press.

10 & 11. Whiteness & possession
This topic runs over two weeks. In week 10 we will focus on general idea of whiteness and
in Week 11 we will home in on the notions of possession and dispossession
(please account for mid-semester break, Week 9)

Main texts:
Cheryl Harris. 1993. 'Whiteness as Property' Harvard Law Review 106(8): 1707-
1791.

Aileen Moreton-Robinson. 2015. 'Part I: Owning Property,' The White
Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. University of
Minnesota Press.

Robert Nichols. 2020. 'Introduction'. Theft is Property: Dispossession and
Critical Theory. Durham NC: Duke UP.

David Roediger. 1991. 'Part I: Introducing the White Worker' The Wages of
Whiteness: Race and the American Working Class. London: Verso.

Ways in:
Zeus Leonardo. 2009. 'Chapter 5: The Colour of Supremacy'. Race, Whiteness,
and Education. London: Routledge.

Tyler Stovall. 2021. 'Conclusion: White Freedom and Freedom from Whiteness'.
White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea. Princeton: Princeton UP.

Extras:
Gerald Horne. 2009. 'Chapter 9: Toward a “White” Australia'. The White Pacific
U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas after the Civil War.
Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press

Byrd, Jodi A., Alyosha Goldstein, Jodi Melamed, and Chandan Reddy. 2018.
. 'Predatory Value: Economies of Dispossession and Disturbed Relationalities'.
  Social Text 135.36.2: 1–18.

 Brenna Bhandar. 2018. Introduction to Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land
 and Racial Regimes of Ownership. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University
 Press.

 Sarah Keenan. 2016. 'Smoke, Curtains and Mirrors: The Production of Race
 Through Time and Title Registration,' Law Critique 28:87–108

 Derek Hook. 2011. 'Retrieving Biko: A Black Consciousness critique of
 whiteness'. African identities 9(1): 19-32.

12 & 13. Racial capitalism
This topic runs over two weeks

Main texts:
Cedric Robinson. 1983. 'Chapter 1: Racial Captialism.' Black Marxism:
The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. London: Zed Press.

Gargi Bhattacharyya. 2018. 'Chapter 4: What racial capitalism is and
what it is not.' Rethinking Racial Capitalism: Questions of
Reproduction and Survival. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
International.

Gerald Horne. 2009. 'Chapter 2: "Blackbirding"'. The White Pacific U.S.
Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas after the Civil War.
Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press

Ways in:
Arun Kundnani. 2020. 'What is racial capitalism?' kundnani.org

Robin Kelly. 'What did Cedric Robinson mean by racial capitalism?' The
Boston Review.

Boston Review Forum Response: To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial
Capitalism, and Justice: Reviving the Black Radical Tradition.

Charisse Burden-Stelly. 2020. 'Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism
Some Theoretical Insights'. Monthly Review.

Extras:
Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin (eds.). 2017.
'Introduction', Futures of Black Radicalism. London: Verso.

Nikhil Pal Singh. 2017. 'On Race, Violence and "So-Called" Primitive
Accumulation,' in Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin (eds.) The Futures of
Black Radicalism. London: Verso.

CARF. 2003. A. Sivanandan. 'Racism and the Market State: An Interview with A.
Sivanandan. Race and Class.

A. Sivanandan. 2013. 'The Market State vs. The Good society'. Race and Class.

K-Sue Park. 2016. 'Money, Mortgages, and the Conquest of America'. Law &
Social Inquiry.

.