Syllabus
Week 1, 12 January: Bushra Mahzabeen: ‘Introduction’
Required Reading:
Gilroy, Paul. "Race ends hereLink opens in a new window." Ethnic and racial studies 21.5 (1998): 838-847.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. "The North Atlantic UniversalsLink opens in a new window." Modern World-System in the Longue Durée. Routledge, 2015. 229-237.
Week 2, 19 January: Stephen Shapiro (online): ‘British Cultural Studies: Moral Panics and the Race-Class Entanglement’
Required Reading:
Hall, Stuart. ‘Race and “Moral Panics” in Postwar Britain’Link opens in a new window (1978) in Selected Writings on Race and Difference (Duke UP, 2021).
Hall,Stuart. ‘Gramsci’s Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity' Link opens in a new window(1986) in Selected Writings on Race and Difference (Duke UP, 2021).
Week 3, 26 January: Michael Niblett: ‘Racial Liberalism, Plantation Thinking, Freedom Thinking’
Required Reading:
Bosma, Ulbe and Kris Manjapra, "Metaphorical Overtures of Freedom and the Plantation Complex.Link opens in a new window" Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics 3.1 (2022): 191-214.
Manjapra, Kris. "Plantation dispossessions: The global travel of agricultural racial capitalismLink opens in a new window." American capitalism: New histories. Columbia University Press, 2018. 361-388.
Jeminsin, N. K. "The Effluent Engine" in How Long 'til Black Future Month and available hereLink opens in a new window
Week 4, 2 February: Abida Younas: ‘Civilization in Transit: Rethinking the Human in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West’
Required Reading:
Mohsin Hamid, Exit West (2017)
Joseph-Arthur Gobineau, The Inequality of Human RacesLink opens in a new window (1853) — selected excerpts
Achille Mbembe, “The Idea of a Borderless World,” in NecropoliticsLink opens in a new window (2019)
Week 5, 9 February: Natalya Din-Kariuki: ‘Premodern Race’
Required Reading
Selections from the following texts, all provided in Ania Loomba and Jonathan Burton eds., Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary CompanionLink opens in a new window (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) which is available as an e-book through Warwick library:
Bodin, Jean. Method for the Easy Comprehension of History (1566) [pages 93-98 in Loomba and Burton],
Huarte, Juan. Examen de ingenious. The examination of mens wits (1594) [pages 133-135 in Loomba and Burton]
Abbot George. A brief description of the whole worlde (1599) [pages 145-150 in Loomba and Burton]
Burton, Robert The anatomy of melancholy (1621) [pages 201-204 in Loomba and Burton].
Week 6, 16 February: Reading week
Week 7, 23 February: Emily McGiffin: ‘Uninhabiting the West: Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Erasure in Canada’
Required reading:
Abel, Jordan, Injun, Talonbooks
Glen Coulthard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. “Grounded normativity / place-based solidarity,Link opens in a new window” American Quarterly 2016 Vol. 68 Issue 2 Pages 249-255
Recommended reading:
Harris, Cole. How Did Colonialism Dispossess? Comments from an Edge of Empire. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2004 Vol. 94 Issue 1 Pages 165-182
Dowling, Sarah. ‘Property, priority, place: Rethinking the poetics of appropriation’, Contemporary Literature 2019 Vol. 60 Issue 1 Pages 98-125
Week 8, 2 March: Paulo de Medeiros: ‘Ghosts, ‘Race’ and the Body: Reading Toni Morrison and Ta-Nehisi Coates’
Required reading:
Morrison, Toni. The Origin of Others, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. Melbourne: Text Publishing Company, 2016:
Recommended reading:
Morrison, Toni. ‘The Slavebody and the Blackbody”. Mouth Full of Blood. London: Chatto & Windus, 2019, pp. 74-78.
Morrison, Toni. “Racism and Fascism”. Mouth Full of Blood. London: Chatto & Windus, 2019, pp. 14-16.
Week 9, 9 March: Caitlin Vandertop: ‘“A World of Statues”: Un/writing the Colonial City’ (TBC)
Required Reading:
Rao, Rahul, 'Fallism And The Endtimes Of Apartheid' and 'The Libidinal Lives of Statues' from The Psychic Lives of StatuesLink opens in a new window (2025).
Recommended Reading:
Hicks, Dan. Every Monument Will Fall (Penguin, 2025)
Carlson, Bronwyn and Terri Farrelly, Monumental Disruptions (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2023).
Week 10, 16 March: Bushra Mahzabeen: “Who Belongs Here?: Race and Migration in the UK”
Required Reading:
Shukla, Nikesh. The Good ImmigrantLink opens in a new window, Unbound Publishing, 2016.
Recommended Reading:
Erel, Umut, Karim Murji & Zaki Nahaboo (2016) ‘Understanding the Contemporary Race–Migration Nexus”’ Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39:8, 1339-1360, DOI:
10.1080/01419870.2016.1161808
Achiume, E. Tendayi. "Racial borders." Geo. LJ 110 (2021): 445.