AFST 305 - Mixed Race Families

Credits: 4

This course explores the history of mixed-race families in the United States in order to analyze systemic racism, everyday discrimination, and forms of agency and resistance in the 19th and 20th centuries. The class will analyze the politicized construction of racial categories, the role of such classifications in the unequal distribution of rights and resources, and issues of colorism, passing, and identity formation. Students will examine anti-miscegenation laws and court rulings that criminalized interracial marriages; immigrant experiences in mixed-race families; transnational adoption and domestic interracial adoption; the multiracial movement; changing U.S. Census questions on race; and mixed-race representations in the media. Restriction: no freshmen. Offered once a year or every other year.