Course Description
The relationship, historical and contemporary, between race, inequality, and the American city. The focus will be on how urban space becomes racially structured and how racial process shapes urban space.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will mentor undergraduate students in facilitating classroom discussion. Additional readings focused on leading peer-reviewed journals will be assigned. There will be two additional papers. One is a critical book review comparing at least two research-intensive academic monographs that relate to course themes and the student's individual research goals. The second is a research relevant term paper. The term paper may be a critical literature review paper on a topic that relates to the student's research agenda, designed to serve as part of a thesis proposal or chapter. The term paper may also report the results of empirical research conducted either as part of the student's thesis research or research conducted for the purposes of the class. The final product of this paper will either be a chapter in a student's thesis or a draft of a potentially publishable journal article.
Athena Title
RACE & CITY
Undergraduate Prerequisite
GEOG 3630 or GEOG 3630E or permission of department
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
The class will be organized around both a lecture and a discussion component. Students will be expected to participate in discussions, prepare brief writing assignments, and work through the theoretical issues presented in lecture and in the readings. Students will learn to articulate and reflect upon the complex interaction of race, material inequalities and urban spatial structure at multiple scales. This course meets the following General Education Abilities by accomplishing the specific learning objectives listed below: • Communicate effectively through writing o Use writing to demonstrate the assimilation and critical analysis of a body of information o Adapt writing to purpose and audience o Interpret content of written materials on related topics from multiple disciplines o Compose effective written materials for various academic and professional contexts, including writing that adheres to high standards of academic authorship and intellectual honesty o Produce writing that is stylistically appropriate and mature • Communicate effectively through speech o Use formal and informal oral communication to demonstrate the assimilation, analysis of a body of information o Adapt oral communication to circumstances and audience o Communicate in various modes and media, including the proper use of appropriate technology o Produce oral communication that is stylistically appropriate and mature o Communicate for academic and professional contexts • Computer Literacy o Use word processing software o Use presentation software o Use the web and web-based mapping capabilities o Use online course management systems such as Desire-2-Learn • Critical Thinking (Engage in complex thought, analysis, and reasoning) o Consider and respectfully engage opposing points of view o Communicate for academic and professional contexts o Support a consistent purpose and point of view o Assimilate, analyze, and present a body of information o Analyze arguments o Interpret inferences and develop subtleties of symbolic and indirect discourse • Moral Reasoning (Ethics) o Recognize the community and the greater common good in addition to individual needs and goals, especially as they apply to racialized inequality o Contribute to the eradication of racial stereotypes and prejudices that exist in society, both in blatant and obvious forms and in more opaque and coded forms o Judge and understand ethical behavior in social applications o Apply societal ethics to scientific inquiry o Use ethical models to make decisions
Topical Outline
1)Race and the Rise of the Industrial City a.European immigration & early urban theory b.Pioneer Black Scholarship 2)Creating the First Racialized Ghetto a.The Great Migration b.The Dual Solution to Housing Crises c.Institutional Discrimination d.Residential Segregation 3)Creating the Second Racialized Ghetto a.Keynsian intervention and a new housing market b.Rebuilding the central city – urban “renewal” c.Public housing and the anchoring of the second ghetto d.Suburbanization and the inequality of capital 4)Civil Rights and New Roles for Government a.Legislative changes and (re)building “broken” cities b.White flight and the racial origins of modern conservatism c.Urban underclass and the race/class debates d.Concentrated Poverty & narratives of crime e.New Black Middle Class 5)New Immigration and New Forms of Diversity a.Early patterns and responses b.New gateways c.Complicating the racial hierarchy d.Racial mixing and multiraciality 6)Remaking the Urban Ghetto in an Era of Globalization a.Gentrification, space and identity politics b.From public housing to HOPE VI, mixed housing and New Urbanisn c.Right to the City and struggles for spatial/racial justice d.Shifting the geography of urban poverty 7)Neoliberalism and Colorblind Racism in the Contemporary City a.Rise of the neoliberal city b.The end of segregation? c.The ghetto-prison connection d.Contesting neoliberalism and recasting the struggle for justice
Syllabus