Month: December 2014

  • ‘I move back and forth between the racial divides’: President Obama opens up on his mixed-race background and says it helps him recognize that most Americans have good intentions The Daily Mail London, United Kingdom 2014-12-21 Francesca Chambers, Political Reporter ‘There’s no doubt that…I move back and forth between the racial divides,’ Obama told CNN…

  • The Whiteness Project: Facing Race In A Changing America National Public Radio All Things Considered 2014-12-21 Karen Grigsby Bates Los Angeles Correspondent Whitney Dow found participants in the Whiteness Project by putting out a call for interested white folks in Buffalo to talk about whiteness on tape. The voices in the Whiteness Project vary by…

  • Vincent van Gogh and Barack Obama in a poem by Derek Walcott Literature & Aesthetics Volume 20, Number 2 (December 2010) pages 181-192 Thijs Weststeijn Department of Art, Religion, and Cultural Sciences University of Amsterdam Remember Vincent, saint of all sunstroke…! The sun explodes into irises, the shadows are crossing like crows, they settle, clawing…

  • Obama’s message of hope and change is all but lost amid the chaos of Ferguson The Guardian 2014-08-22 Patricia Williams, James L. Dohr Professor of Law Columbia University, New York, New York The president is being pressed to take sides in a personal, political and structural tragedy in a divided nation In 2008, the year…

  • Anti-intellectualism is taking over the US The Guardian 2012-05-18 Patricia Williams, James L. Dohr Professor of Law Columbia University, New York, New York The rise in academic book bannings and firings is compounded by the US’s growing disregard for scholarship itself Recently, I found out that my work is mentioned in a book that has…

  • My family has always been mixed race. But it has never been post-racial The Guardian 2014-12-17 Ramou Sarr Boston, Massachusetts I was always terrified that my white nephew would grow up to be a racist. The events in Ferguson tested our relationship to its breaking point It was almost 10 years ago, and my little…

  • Beyond the ‘Race’ Concept: The Reproduction of Racism in England Sydney Studies in Society and Culture Volume 4 (1988) pages 7-31 Robert Miles, Associate Dean of Study Abroad and International Exchanges College of Arts and Sciences University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Large numbers of people continue for long periods of time to cling to myth,…

  • Making and Unmaking Whiteness in Early New South Fiction After the Civil War Smashwords 2012-06-06 77 pages (21,670 words) eBook ISBN: 9781476497068 Peter Schmidt, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English Literature Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania This essay—a work of literary criticism and critical race studies written to be accessible to non-specialists—examines how popular fiction…

  • English 49, “Whiteness” and Racial Difference Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania Spring 1997 Peter Schmidt, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English Literature A look at the conflicted ways in which “racial” identities and differences have been constructed in past and contemporary cultures, especially in the U.S. Topics given emphasis in the syllabus include why saying…

  • EN-255 Passing Narratives Juniata College, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania Fall Semester Passing narratives investigate how the boundaries of identity can be reimagined. Most often depicting racial passing (when a person “passes for” someone of another race), these narratives also can be about performing another gender or sexual identity. In this course, we will examine a variety of…