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Race and Racism in Europe

Analytical Thinking
Communication
Critical Thinking

Course Description

Although Europe is often seen as exclusively white, it has always been racially diverse. This course contests assumptions of European racial homogeneity while demonstrating that race is a historically specific concept that changes over time. Students will chart the history of race from the Renaissance to the present.

Athena Title

Race and Racism in Europe

Pre or Corequisite

Any course in HIST or AFST or AFAM or ANTH or ENGL 1101 or ENGL 1101E or ENGL 1101S or ENGL 1102 or ENGL 1102E or POLS 1101 or POLS 1101E or POLS 1101S or POLS 1105H

Grading System

A - F (Traditional)

Student Learning Outcomes

  • By the end of this course, students will be able to arrive at conclusions about the history of race and racism in Europe by gathering and weighing evidence, logical argument, and listening to counter argument.
  • By the end of this course, students will be able to write stylistically appropriate papers and essays. Students will be able to analyze ideas and evidence, organize their thoughts, and revise and edit their finished essays.
  • By the end of this course, students will be able to identify how the history of race and racism in Europe has shaped social and cultural identities and attitudes toward race, encouraging them to understand diverse worldviews and experiences.
  • By the end of this course, students will be able to apply appropriate methodological approaches to their analysis of primary sources and to organize their evidence to show historical continuities and discontinuities.

Topical Outline

  • Week 1: Race, Blackness, and Europe • Stephen Small, “Introduction: The Empire Strikes Back,” in Black Europe and the African Diaspora (University of Illinois Press, 2009) • Alison Blakely, “The Emergence of Afro-Europe: A Preliminary Sketch,” in Black Europe and the African Diaspora
  • Week 2: Slavery in Europe • Annemarie Jordan, “Images of Empire: Slaves in the Lisbon Household and Court of Catherine of Austria,” in Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: 2005) • Sue Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France:” The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (Cambridge: 1997), selections
  • Week 3: Early Modern Black Communities • Kate Lowe, “Visible Lives: Black Gondoliers and Other Black Africans in Renaissance Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 66, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 412-452. • Debra Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia (Cornell University Press: Ithaca), selections
  • Week 4: Creating Race • Pierre H. Boulle, “François Bernier and the Origins of the Modern Concept of Race,” in The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, ed. Tyler Stovall and Sue Peabody • Buffon on theories of climactic variation; other readings? In Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader
  • Week 5: Codifying Race • Malick Ghachem, The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge: 2012), selections • Code Noir
  • Week 6: Interracial Families • Jennifer L. Palmer, Intimate Bonds: Race and the Family in the French Atlantic (Penn: 2016), selections • Daniel Livesay, Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833 (UNC Press, 2018), selections
  • Week 7: Race and Beauty • Robin Mitchell, “‘Ourika mania’: interrogating race, class, space, and place in early nineteenth-century France,” African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 10, no. 1 (2017): 85-95 • Claire de Duras, Ourika
  • Week 8: Creating Racial Others • Albert Gouaffo, “Prince Dido of Didotown and ‘Human Zoos’ in Wilhelmine Germany: Strategies for Self-representation under the Othering Gaze,” in Africa in Europe, Edited by Eve Rosenhaft and Robbie Aitken (2013) • Eric Deroo et al, Human Zoos: Science and Spectacle in the Age of Empire (Liverpool, 2008), selections • Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully, Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography (Princeton: 2009), selections
  • Week 9: The Emergence of “Racial Science” • Darwin; Social Darwinists
  • Week 10: Defining “Europe” in WWI • Ruth Ginio, “French Officers, African Officers, and the Violent Image of African Colonial Soldiers,” Historical Reflections 36, No. 2 (2010): 59-75 • Joe Lunn, “France’s legacy to Demba Mboup? A Senegalese griot and his descendants remember his military service during the First World War,” in Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge: 2011), 108-124 • Alison S. Fell, “Nursing the Other: the representation of colonial troops in French and British First World War nursing memoirs,” in Race, Empire and First World War Writing, 158-174
  • Week 11: Pan-Africanism Between the Wars • Michael Rowe, “Sex, ‘race’ and riot in Liverpool, 1919,” Immigrants and Minorities 19, no. 2 (July 2000): 53-70 • Jennifer Anne Boittin, “’Among them Complicit’? Life and Politics in France’s Black Communities, 1919-1939,” Africa in Europe (2013) • Lorelle Semley, “An “Evolution Revolution” in Paris,” in To Be Free and French: Citizenship in France’s Atlantic Empire (Cambridge: 2018) • S. Ani Mukherji, “‘Like Another Planet to the Darker Americans’: Black Cultural Work in 1930s Moscow,” in Africa in Europe ed. Eve Rosenhaft and Robbie Aitken (2013), 120-141 • Josephine Baker, Film
  • Week 12: Race and Citizenship • Lorelle Semley, “A More Perfect French Union,” in To Be Free and French: Citizenship in France’s Atlantic Empire (Cambridge: 2018)
  • Week 13: Decolonization and Negritude • Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonia

Institutional Competencies

Analytical Thinking

The ability to reason, interpret, analyze, and solve problems from a wide array of authentic contexts.


Communication

The ability to effectively develop, express, and exchange ideas in written, oral, interpersonal, or visual form.


Critical Thinking

The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.


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