ANTH 21312/CRPC 21312 Whiteness and Power: Critical Perspectives on Race, Class and Privilege in the US Monday/Wednesday 4:30pm-5:50pm,

Cobb Hall - Room 101 Instructor: Andrew Graan Phone: 773.702.0876 and 773.988.3804 Email: apgraan@uchicago.edu Course Description: The question of race has been a central theoretical concern for the social scientific study of the United States. Until recently, however, this research tradition paid scant attention to the issue of whiteness and white racial identities. Indeed, how is whiteness constructed and defined in the contemporary United States? This course will focus in on the unmarked category of whiteness and examine the myriad and often contradictory ways in which white privilege is secured and obscured in the US in order to examine larger dynamics of identity formation and the structuring of inequality. Building upon a recent surge in critical studies on whiteness, we will investigate how white identities are constructed and contested in post-Civil Rights America and how practices and institutions of whiteness bear upon raced and classed forms of exclusion and discrimination. Throughout we will aim to develop critical perspectives and reflexive bearings on how whiteness and white privilege impact the social worlds that we inhabit. Office Hours: I will typically hold office hours on Thursdays and Fridays from 4:30pm-5:30pm in Judd Hall 321, although this is subject to change. Changes in office hours will, of course, be announced. Students wishing to meet must sign up in advance. Course Requirements and Grading: Student evaluation will be based upon assignments and class participation. This includes attendance and participation (20%), one major class presentation (10%), five short response papers (10%), a 5-page essay (20%) and a 7-8 page final paper (40%). Attendance to all classes is mandatory, unless the student makes arrangements with me prior to her absence. Students are expected to read all required texts thoroughly and to come to class prepared to discuss them. Classes will meet for one hour and twenty minutes two times each week, and will primarily consist of a discussion format in which we analyze the assigned texts together and draw out their broader implications. Short lectures, however, may also be integrated into occasional class meetings. Additionally, I will hold two hours of office hours each week. Attendance and Participation: Class attendance and participation are mandatory. You must inform me of any absences in advance in order for them to be excused, or in the case of an emergency, as soon as possible after the event. Excessive absences or bouts of unpreparedness will affect your grade negatively. In case of an absence, you are still responsible for all of the material covered. Tardiness will not be tolerated. In-class Presentation on Readings: Each student will be responsible for one in-class presentation on the readings assigned for a particular class session. In the presentations, one should first offer a brief synopsis of the readings key arguments and then raise three critical points on the readings for class discussion. Pointing to specific passages of an assigned reading that warrant unpacking

or discussion is also recommended. The presentations will begin each class and should last no more than 10 to 15 minutes. Response Papers: Throughout the semester you are expected to turn in 5 short response papers on the readings assigned for that class session. (Late response papers, i.e., any that address past readings, will not be accepted.) These papers should be approximately one single-spaced page. The essays aim to offer students a forum to articulate their reflections, questions, confusions, and criticisms on assigned readings. As such, individual response papers will not receive a formal grade, and students should feel free to be exploratory and as creative as they like. However, the papers should reflect your engagement with the reading, whether positively or negatively critical. Essay One Field Analysis: In the place of a midterm exam, students will be required to write a 5-page analysis of how whiteness functions in a given social setting or cultural text. Students will be expected to select their own setting/text and to incorporate class readings into their analysis. A short paragraph describing the proposed paper topic should be submitted two weeks before the paper is due. Further details on this assignment will be forthcoming. Essay Two The Final: The final will be a 7-8-page paper responding to one of several essay topics given by the instructor. The paper will be due on the last day of class. Students who wish to pursue an essay topic of their own choice should see the instructor for approval. Required Texts: All required texts are available at the Seminary Coop. While these books will all be on reserve in the Regenstein Library, it is highly recommended that you purchase your own copy. --Thomas Paul Bonfiglio 2002 Race and the Rise of Standard American. --John Hartigan, Jr. 1999 Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit. --John L. Jackson, Jr. 2008 Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness. --George Lipsitz 2006 The Possessive Investment of Whiteness, 2nd Edition. In addition, several articles and book chapters will be assigned during the course of the semester. These will be available on our course Chalk page. You are expected to print these articles and bring them to each relevant class.

Course Schedule and Readings: Week One: From Color-Blind to Seeing Whiteness January 4: Introduction January 6: Problematizing Color-Blindness ***Faye V. Harrison The Persistent Power of Race in the Cultural and Political Economy of Racism (1995) in Annual Review of Anthropology 24:47-74. ***Lee D. Baker The Color Blind Bind in From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 (1998), pp. 208-228. Week Two: What is Whiteness? Establishing an Object of Study January 11: Facts and Concepts ***George Lipsitz The Possessive Investment of Whiteness and How Whiteness Works: Inheritance, Health, and Wealth in The Possessive Investment of Whiteness (2006), pp. 123, 105-117. ***Amanda E. Lewis What Group? Studying Whites and Whiteness in the Era of "Color-Blindness (2004) Sociological Theory 22(4): 623-646. January 13: Reflexivity and the Study of Race in the US ***Sarita Srivastava Youre calling me a racist? The Moral and Emotional Regulation of Antiracism and Feminism (2005) Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31(1):29-62. ***Barbara Applebaum White Privilege/White Complicity: Connecting Benefiting From to Contributing To (2008) in Philosophy of Education 2008, pp. 292-300. ***Michael Taussig Terror as Usual: Walter Benjamins Theory of History as a State of Seige (1991) in The Nervous System, pp. 11-36. Recommended Further Reading: --Laura Nader Up the Anthropologist - Perspectives Gained from Studying Up (1972) in Reinventing Anthropology, edited by Dell Hymes. --John Hartigan, Jr. Establishing the Fact of Whiteness (1997) in American Anthropologist 99(3): 495-505. Recommedned Further Reading: --Kwame Anthony Appiah The Multiculturalist Misunderstanding (1997) in The New York Review of Books 44(15). --Roger Sanjek The Perduring Inequalities of Race in Race (1994), edited by R. Sanjek and S. Gregory, pp. 1-11 --Howard Winant Behind Blue Eyes: Whiteness and Contemporary US Racial Politics (1997) in New Left Review 225:73-88. Week Three: The Bigger Picture - Conceptualizing Race in the Contemporary US January 18: No Class Martin Luther King Day January 20: Race, Society, and the State ***Michael Omi and Howard Winant Introduction, Racial Formation, and The Racial State in Racial Formation in the United States, 2nd Edition (1994).

***Mae M. Ngai The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924. (1999) The Journal of American History 86(1): 67-92. ***Karen Brodkin Sachs How Did Jews Become White Folks? in Race (1994), edited by Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek, pp. 78-102. ***George Lipsitz Law and Order: Civil Rights Laws and White Privilege in The Possessive Investment of Whiteness (2006), pp. 24-47. Recommedned Further Reading: --Matthew Frye Jacobson Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (1998). -- David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness (1991). Week Four: Markedness and Race January 25: Markedness and Racial Identity ***Ruth Frankenberg Whiteness and Americanness: Examining Constructions of Race, Culture, and Nation in White Womens Life Narratives in Race (1994), edited by Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek, pp. 62-77. ***bell hooks Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination in Cultural Studies (1992), edited by L. Grossberg, et al. Pp. 338-346. ***W.E.B. Du Bois The White World and The Colored World Within in Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of the Race Concept (1940). ESSAY ONE TOPICS DUE January 27: (Un)Marked Citizenships ***Bonnie Urciuoli Acceptable Difference: The Cultural Evolution of the Model Ethnic American Citizen in Democracy and Ethnography (1998), edited by Carol Greenhouse, pp. 178-195. ***Aihwa Ong Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States (1996) in Current Anthropology 37(5):737-762. *** Mae M. Ngai No Human Being is Illegal (2006) in Womens Studies Quarterly 34(3/4): 291-5. Recommedned Further Reading: --Toni Morrison Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1993) --Linda Waugh Marked and Unmarked - a Choice between Unequals in Semiotic Structure (1982) in Semiotica 38.3/4, 299-318. --Pamela Perry White Means Never Having to Say Youre Ethnic: White Youth and the Construction of Cultureless Identities in Life in America: Identity and Everyday Experience (2003), edited by Lee D. Baker, pp. 339-358. --Jack Hitt Mighty White Of You (2005) in Harpers Magazine, pp. 39-55. --Brackette Williams Stains on My Name, War in My Veins, Chs 5&6, pp. 127-174.\ --Daniel A. Segal The Hypervisible and the Masked: Some Thoughts on the Mutual Embeddedness of Race and Class in the United States in Democracy and Ethnography (1998), edited by Carol Greenhouse, pp. 50-60. --William Julius Wilson The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions (1980).

Week Five: The Racial Politics of American English February 1: Race Xenophobia and Language Standardization in the US ***Thomas Paul Bonfiglio Race and the Rise of Standard American (2002)

February 3: Forging Whiteness on the Linguistic Terrain ***Jane H. Hill Language, Race, and the White Public Sphere (1999) American Anthropologist 100(3):680-689 ***Bonnie Urciuoli Racialization and Language (1996) in Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class, pp.15-40. Recommedned Further Reading: --Michael Silverstein The Monoglot Standard in America: Standardization and Metaphors of Linguistic Hegemony in The Matrix of Language (1996), edited by D. Brenneis and R. Macaulay, pp. 284-306 --Sara Trechter and Mary Bucholtz White Noise: Bringing Language into Whiteness Studies (2001) Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11(1):3-21. --William Labov The Social Stratification of English in New York City (1966) Week Six: Markedness and Identity in the Mass Media Public Sphere February 8: ***Stuart Hall The Whites of Their Eyes Racist Ideologies and the Media (1981) Silver Linings edited by George Bridges and Rosalind Brunt ***Michael Warner The Mass Subject and the Mass Public in Publics and Counterpublics (2003), pp. 159-186. February 10: ***Lauren Berlant The Face of America and the State of Emergency (1997) in The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, pp. 175-220. ***Gretchen Bakke Dead White Men: An Essay on the Changing Dynamics of Race in American Action Cinema (2010) Anthropological Quarterly 83(2) Recommedned Further Reading: --Rosemary J. Coombe, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties (1998). ESSAY ONE DUE Week Seven: Geographies of White Privilege, Or How Whiteness Gets Spatialized February 15: ***Richard Lloyd Part Two: Post-Industrial Bohemia in Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Post-Industrial City (2006), pp.73-149. Februrary 17: ***Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas All This is Turning White Now: Latino Constructions of White Culture and Whiteness in Chicago (2001) in Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 13(2): 73-95 ***Setha Low Maintaining Whiteness: The Fear of Others and Niceness (2009)

Transforming Anthropology 17(2): 79-92. Recommedned Further Reading: --Mike Davis The Literary Destruction of Los Angeles in Ecology of Fear (1998), pp.273-356. --Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (1998). --Setha Low Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (2004). Week Eight: Unmarked Racism Performances and Effects February 22: Performing Whiteness ***Miceala di Leonardo White Ethnicities, Identity Politics, and Baby Bears Chair (1994) Social Text 41: 165-191. ***George Lipsitz White Desire: The Case of Robert Johnson in The Possessive Investment in Whiteness (2006), pp.118-139. ***Mary Bucholtz The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness (2001) in Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11(1): 84-100. ***Scott Kiesling Stances of Whiteness and Hegemony in Fraternity Mens Discourse (2001) in Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11(1): 101-115. FINAL PAPER TOPICS DISTRIBUTED February 24: Confronting Whiteness ***John L. Jackson, Jr. Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (2008) Recommedned Further Reading: --Kyle Kusz I Want to Be a Minority: The Politics of Youthful White Masculinities in Sport and Popular Culture in the 1990s America in Life in America: Identity and Everyday Experience (2003), edited by Lee D. Baker, pp. 359-377. --Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins A World Brightly Different in Reading National Geographic (1993), pp. 87-117. --Melanie E. L. Bush Breaking the Code of Good Intentions: Everyday Forms of Whiteness (2004) Week Nine: Ambivalences of Whiteness March 1 &3 ***John Hartigan, Jr. Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit (1999) Recommedned Further Reading: --Virginia Dominguez White By Definition Week Ten: Whither Whiteness? March 8: Critical Whiteness and Political Ethics ***Danielle Allen, Talking to Strangers: The Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education (2006) [selections]

March 10: Toward an Anti-Racism ***William Aal, Moving from Guilt to Action: Anti-Racist Organizing and the Concept of Whiteness for Activism and the Academy (2001) in The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness, pp. 294-310. ***David Roediger, Introduction in Towards the Abolition of Whiteness (1994), pp. 1-18. ***Carlo Ginzburg To Kill a Chinese Mandarin: The Moral Implications of Distance in Wooden Eyes (2001), pp.157-173.

(FINAL PAPER DUE!)