St. Lawrence University
The Cultural Encounters Program
Grant Cornwell and Eve Stoddard
Cultural Encounters Senior Seminar:
Comparative Studies in Racial and Cultural
Identities
This capstone course will draw on students'
experiences in off-campus programs to
enrich and interrogate dominant U.S.
assumptions about race, ethnicity, and
culture. Thus the course will pursue
in depth the question: What is the relationship
between one's specific identities (gender,
ethnicity, etc.) and one's participation
in larger polities, whether regional,
national, or global? The substance of
the course will be comparative analysis
of a series of regional case studies,
initially focused on the Caribbean and
North American region, then moving outward
to include the areas class members have
studied and lived in. Based on the location
of St. Lawrence's abroad programs, we
expect to cover several European countries,
Kenya, and India, in addition to Trinidad
and the U.S.
Course readings will be drawn from
literature, contemporary cultural studies
theory, and philosophy of race, gender
and identity, supplemented by films
shown outside of class. A significant
portion of the readings will be drawn
from "critical white studies," looking
at the ways white supremacy has been
constructed and maintained in both historically
specific and transnational ways. The
course will pay particular attention
to the interrelations between gender
and race in different regions, especially
as this is revealed through attitudes
toward miscegenation and mixed-race
identities.
In keeping with the goals of the Cultural
Encounters program, you will complete
a variety of kinds of assignments during
the course involving research, writing
and speech. You will pursue a sustained
research project, with a sequence of
elements, each of which will be revised.
The projects will focus on questions
about racial/cultural identities synthesizing
your experiences abroad (or in a culturally
distinctive U.S. off-campus program),
additional research, and the theoretical
readings of this course. Specifically,
seminar participants will research the
following questions:
1) What does "multicultural ism" mean
in each national context? Does the country
understand itself as multicultural?
What is the place of multiculturalism
in national discourse, education, politics,
and media?
2) How does the country understand or
categorize racial and ethnic difference?
Who are the groups? How do they identify?
3) Are there recognized categories of
mixed race identities? What is their
social standing? Are there forms of
cultural hybridization or creolization?
4) What is the history of power relations
between and among the groups? What are
the tensions? Conflicts? Alliances?
5) How have colonialism and postcolonialism
affected these understandings and relations?
Out of this preliminary research, you
will be asked to develop a focused thesis.
You will be given a block of class time
to teach the seminar; in consultation
with the instructors, you will assign
appropriate readings in advance. You
will be given a separate grade for the
quality of the class they teach.
The second assignment is a ten-page
self-reflective essay due during final
exam week which draws on the theoretical
readings of the seminar to trace how
your own identities have crystallized,
changed, fractured, developed over the
course of their college years, with
particular attention to the FYP experience,
Cultural Encounters and other cultural
studies courses, campus social life,
and study abroad, using the journals
they composed while studying off-campus.
Seminar members enrolled in the Cultural
Encounters track will submit this as
part of their CE portfolios.
Primary Texts:
- Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy
- Rigoberta Menchu, I, Rigoberta
Menchu
- Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La
Frontera
- Bernabe, Chamoiseau, Confiant, Eloge
de la Creolite
- Ruth Frankenberg, ed., Displacing
Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural
Criticism
- K.A. Appiah and A. Gutman, Color
Conscious
- Martha Nussbaum, For Love of
Country
Course Outline:
Format: One 3-hour meeting per week
Week 1 Introductions: seminar participants,
goals and requirements
- Questions about identity/ies: single
or multiple, individual or social,
- fixed or fluctuating, given or created,
contingent or essential, etc.
- Film: Mississippi Masala
Week 2 Globalization: 500 Years Ago
and Now
- Shohat & Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism
- Barber, Xhad vs McWorld
- Kincaid, Lucy
Week 3 Diasporas: From Ancient Hebrews
to Contemporary Hindus
- Elliott Skinner, "The Dialectic
between Diasporas and Homelands"
- Naipaul, The Middle Passage
- Walcott, The Antilles
- Samaroo, "Early African and East
Indian Muslims in Trinidad and Tobago"
- Poynting, "East Indian Women in
the Caribbean"
- Vertovec, "Three Fundamental Spheres
of Change among Indians Overseas"
- Documentary: Stuart Hall, The
Caribbean
Week 4 Africa and the African Diaspora
- Rodney, The Groundings with My
Brothers
- Bolivar, Natalia, " The Orishas
in Cuba"
- Kake, "The Impact of Afro-Americans
on French-Speaking Black Africans,
1919-45"
- Bob Marley, Reggae, and Rastafarianism
Week 5 Indigeneity
- Silverblatt, "Becoming Indian in
the Central Andes of Seventeenth-
Century Peru"
- Menchu, I, Rigoberto Menchu
- Minh-ha, Trinh T., "No Master Territories"
- Sollors, Werner, "Who is Ethnic?"
- Hall, Stuart, "New Ethnicities"
- Mudrooroo, "White Forms, Aboriginal
Content"
- Goldie, Terry, "The Representation
of the Indigene"
- Griffiths, Gareth, "The Myth of
Authenticity"
- Fee, Margery, "Who Can Write as
Other?"
Week 6 Hybridity: Mestizaje, Metissage
- Anzaldua, Gloria, Borderlands/La
Frontera
- Bhabha, Homi, "Culture's In-Between"
Week 7 Creolization and Creolite
- Bernabe, Chamoiseau, Conflant, Eloge
de la Creolite
- Brother Marvin, "Jahaji Bhai"
Week 8 Whiteness
- Frankenberg, Ruth, Displacing
Whiteness
Week 9 Race, Gender, and Ethnicity
in Kenya: Student Presentations
Week 10 Race, Gender, and Ethnicity
in England: Student Presentations
Week 11 Race, Gender, and Ethnicity
in Europe: Student Presentations
Week 12 Race, Gender, and Ethnicity
in the Americas: Student Presentations
Week 13 Rethinking Identities
- Appiah, K.A., & Gutmann, Amy, Color
Conscious
Week 14 Rethinking Responsibilities
- Nussbaum, For Love of Country
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