Undergraduate Course: Understanding Race and Colonialism (SSPS08013)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 8 (Year 1 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Understanding Race and Colonialism is a University-wide course open to all pre-honours students. It engages with critical approaches to the study of race, racism and colonial formations from a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach. It provides a theoretical and methodological foundation for understanding race as a dynamic socio-historical phenomenon, organizing principle of power that governs institutions, structures and everyday life, and contested site of domination.
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| Course description |
Why do ideas about race feature in social relations today? What structures of knowledge do ideas about racial difference rely upon? How do historical projects of race-making come to be refashioned in contemporary social life? This course engages with such questions by examining the provenance of race and its defining role in the formation of colonial modernity. It provides an overview of key theoretical approaches and methodological debates in the study of race, racism and colonial formations across various disciplines and intersecting sites of modern power. This course is a University-wide introductory course and open to students across the University.
This course is intended to serve as an introduction to race and colonial studies. It traces the relationship between race and colonialism across a number of central concepts and theoretical approaches. These include:
- Power/Knowledge: Locating Race and Epistemology
- Intersectionality and Its Counter-Parts
- Whiteness
- Islamophobia and Antisemitism
- Transatlantic Slavery and Its Afterlife
- Decolonization
- Feminist Debates
- The Politics of Solidarity
- Art, Aesthetics and the Politics of Refusal
Understanding Race and Colonialism is taught through weekly lectures and tutorial classes. This course holds one long length lecture (100 minutes) + one 50-minute tutorial each week.
The aim of the lecture component is to further introduce and distil the key concepts and lessons from the assigned readings. These lectures will go over the main ideas from the readings, introduce other empirical context or examples and provide a scaffold of each weekly topic. The lectures are aimed to provide general guidance for what to take from each week's set of readings and to allow for students to engage more deeply in the material and think more critically about what is at stake in study of race, racialization and colonial studies. These lectures will undergird, not substitute the reading or tutorial participation. Students will be asked to complete the readings ahead of the scheduled lecture presentation. Lectures will be delivered through the use of slides and at times other audio/visual materials.
Tutorial sessions will be held weekly, with the first one commencing in week one. During the tutorial sessions, various methods will be adopted to facilitate group discussion including: group discussion; in-class presentations and reflection exercises and engaging with supplementary material (e.g. film, audio texts, news and social media etc.). Students will be expected to show up to the tutorials having done the readings and attended the lecture.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 100 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
166 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
85 %,
Practical Exam
15 %
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| Feedback |
Assignments and essays will be returned with feedback within 15 working days of submission. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Identify race as a historical formation and social category that shapes systems and structures of the present.
- Analyze race as an intersecting site of power alongside gender, sexuality, class, and ability.
- Acquire a core understanding of the key concepts and debates in the study of race and racism.
- Discern key distinctions between various theoretical approaches and methods adopted by scholars of race, colonialism and decolonial thought.
- Apply theories and modes of analysis acquired from the course to think reflexively about everyday relations of power.
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Reading List
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth, trans, Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1965.
Lewis, Reina and Mills, Sara. Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2003.
Meer, Nasar. Key Concepts in Race and Ethnicity. London: Sage Publications, 2014.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Solomos, J. (Ed) Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Racisms. London: Routledge, 2020.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Students will develop Graduate Attributes such as
- Critical and reflective thinking skills (i.e. critique/critical analysis)
- Curiosity for learning that makes a positive difference
- Skilled communication (i.e. expressing oral and written knowledge about power and inequality)
- Passion to engage locally and globally
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| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Shaira Vadasaria
Tel: (0131 6)51 3060
Email: svadasar@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Abby Gleave
Tel: (0131 6)51 1337
Email: abby.gleave@ed.ac.uk |
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