Chelsi West Ohueri

The purpose of this course is to provide students with an opportunity to learn about white nationalism and to examine it in multiple forms. Using a cultural anthropology perspective, the course will focus on the intersections of national identity and race, and in particular whiteness, in Europe and the United States. A significant component of the course will examine historical and newly emergent nationalist ideologies in Eastern Europe. The course will begin with lectures and discussions that give students the chance to critically unpack key terminology (nation, nationalism, race, white nationalism, white supremacy) that are often used in media and popular culture but at the same time, are rarely well-defined and contextualized. Students will read literature from multiple disciplines, including anthropology, European studies, history, political science, and race and ethnic studies. Each week students will complete in-class rapid fire writing responses about the readings before we begin discussions. This course will involve regular shorter writing assignments and a final writing paper. Students will also have the chance to work in small groups on a project. Assignments will include book chapter readings, journal articles, newspaper stories, and one book-length ethnography. The syllabus will also include films. By the end of the course students should be able to understand the concept of white nationalism and its manifestations in multiple forms in Europe and the United States. They should also be able to understand theories of nation, race, and whiteness, and be able to critically reflect on these topics.

In this graduate level course, students will trace the concept of race over time and critically examine various socioracial configurations across the globe through an anthropological lens. Though race and racism are often framed as American or Western constructs, this course provides students the opportunity to engage these concepts from a global perspective, as they examine historical and contemporary aspects of race, racialization, and white supremacy. In this course we will ask questions about comparative analysis and how scholars study race in varying local contexts, for example the study of race in Eastern Europe vs. parts of the Americas. In doing so, students will additionally learn more about the relationship between race and related concepts of ethnicity and nation. Additional topics that will be addressed in the course include colonialism, genocide, xenophobia, and anti-blackness.  

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Description

The purpose of this course is to provide students with an opportunity to learn about white nationalism and to examine it in multiple forms. Using a cultural anthropology perspective, the course will focus on the intersections of national identity and race, and in particular whiteness, in Europe and the United States. A 
significant component of the course will examine historical and newly emergent nationalist ideologies in 
Eastern Europe. The course will begin with lectures and discussions that give students the chance to 
critically unpack key terminology (nation, nationalism, race, white nationalism, white supremacy) that areoften used in media and popular culture but at the same time, are rarely well-defined and contextualized. Students will read literature from multiple disciplines, including anthropology, European studies, history, political science, and race and ethnic studies. 

Each week students will complete in-class rapid fire writing responses about the readings before we begin discussions.This course will involve regular shorter writing assignments and a final writing paper. Students will also have the chance to work in small groups on a project. Assignments will include book chapter readings, journal articles, newspaper stories, and one book-length ethnography.

The syllabus will also include films. By the end of the course students should be able to understand the concept of white nationalism and its manifestations in multiple forms in Europe and the United States. They should also be able to understand theories of nation, race, and whiteness, and be able to critically reflect on these topics.