Undergraduate Course: Geographies of Race and Racism (GEGR10145)
Course Outline
| School | School of Geosciences |
College | College of Science and Engineering |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Understanding how race and racism work is fundamental to interpret the world we live in. They play a central role in a number of current social, political and cultural processes. Examples are the expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement across different countries and regions, the disproportionate impact of recent crises and disasters on BAME demographics, or the debates over representations of people of colour in mainstream media. This course is an introduction to theories and analyses of race and racism in human geography. It will provide you with knowledge and skills to observe and analyse how race works in society and how it impacts our everyday lives. In addition to exploring theories of race, we will discuss the impacts of racism in various geographical contexts and across different spaces and we will critically analyse cultural texts to explore how they reproduce and/or contest racism. |
| Course description |
This course offers an introduction to theorisations and empirical analyses of race and racism in human geography. The course is divided in three parts. The course will start with an introduction to race as a social construct and an exploration of theorisations of race in the social sciences (Part 1, - Theorising and contextualising race, racialisation and racism¿). We will discuss the origins of racial categories and we will trace their histories across different geographical contexts. We will observe the contestations of these categories from a variety of academic and activist perspectives, with a specific focus on intersectional critiques by Black feminist scholars and activists. In Part 2, - Spatialising race: Critical geographies of race and racialisation. we will discuss the specific contribution of anti-racist critiques to the discipline of geography. Our exploration will focus on three specific directions of geographical enquiry: Black geographies, geographies of whiteness and geographies of Islamophobia. The final section of the course, Part 3 - Navigating and Contesting Racialisations and Racisms, will focus on contemporary examples of empirical geographical research.
In this course, we will discuss both academic literature and a variety of cultural texts that present current understandings of race and racism (poems, songs, videos, movies, photographs, social media material). The resources provided in the course will include perspectives from non-English-speaking contexts, in order to problematise the centrality of the English language in the production of discourses about race (and against racism). Detailed outline of the course:
PART 1 THEORISING AND CONTEXTUALISING RACE, RACIALISATION AND RACISM
Week 1 An introduction to race and racialisation: histories and genealogies of a social construct
Week 2 Race in intersection: Black feminist critiques of racism
Week 3 Race in space: Critical race theory and geography
PART 2 SPATIALISING RACE: CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF RACE AND RACIALISATION
Week 4 Critical whiteness studies and geographies of whiteness
Week 5 Black geographies in a transnational context
Week 6 The racialisation of Islam and geographies of Islamophobia
PART 3 NAVIGATING AND CONTESTING RACIALISATIONS AND RACISMS
Week 7 The racialized neighbourhood
Week 8 The nation and its racialised landscapes
Week 9 Environmental racism
Week 10 Queer of colour critique and resistance
Week 11 - Revision
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Have a critical understanding of the theorisations and concepts of geographies of race and racialisation, and of the contribution of these to the wider discipline of human geography.
- Apply a critical analysis to real-world workings of race, racialisations and racism, linking these analyses to the relevant geographical literature.
- Have a critical understanding of Black feminist conceptualisations of intersectionality and an ability to recognise the entanglements between geographies of race, gender, sexualities, class and disability.
- Interpret the workings of racialisation and racism in cultural texts and representations.
- Synthesise complex information, organise it around a clear argument and communicate it in a clear and effective way.
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Reading List
Abbreviated reading list:
Anderson, K. J. (1987). The idea of Chinatown: The power of place and institutional practice in the making of a racial category. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 77(4), 580-598.Anderson, K. (2002). The racialization of difference: Enlarging the story field. The Professional Geographer, 54(1), 25-30Bledsoe, A., & Wright, W. J. (2019). The pluralities of black geographies. Antipode, 51(2), 419-437.Bonnett, A. (1997). Geography, race and whiteness: invisible traditions and current challenges. Area, 29(3), 193-199.Bonnett, A., & Nayak, A. (2003). Cultural geographies of racialization: The territory of race. Handbook of cultural geography. London: SAGE, 300-312.Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. London: Harper Collins AcademicCrang, M., & Tolia-Kelly, D. P. (2010). Nation, race, and affect: Senses and sensibilities at national heritage sites. Environment and planning A, 42(10), 2315-2331.Crenshaw, K. (1990). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stan. L. Rev., 43, 1241.Crenshaw, K. , Gotanda, A. , Peller, G. and Thomas, K. (eds.) (1995) Critical race theory: the key writings that formed the movement. New York: The New Press.Delaney, D. (2002). The space that race makes. The professional geographer, 54(1), 6-14.Delgado, R., and Stefancic, J. (2017). Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. Dwyer, O. J., & Jones III, J. P. (2000). White socio-spatial epistemology. Social & Cultural Geography, 1(2), 209-222.Eaves, L. E. (2017). Black geographic possibilities: On a queer Black South. Southeastern Geographer, 57(1), 80-95.Frisina, Annalisa, and Camilla Hawthorne. "Italians with veils and Afros: Gender, beauty, and the everyday anti-racism of the daughters of immigrants in Italy." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44.5 (2018): 718-735.Gilmore, R. W. (2002). Fatal couplings of power and difference: Notes on racism and geography. The professional geographer, 54(1), 15-24.Gilroy, P. 1987: There Ain¿t No Black in the Union Jack. London: Routledge.Hancock, C. (2020). Accommodating Islamophobia: How municipalities make place for Muslims in Paris. Social & Cultural Geography, 21(4), 527-545.Hawthorne, C. (2017). In search of black Italia. Transition, (123), 152-174.Hawthorne, C. (2021). Making Italy: Afro-Italian entrepreneurs and the racial boundaries of citizenship. Social & Cultural Geography, 22(5), 704-724.Hopkins, P. (2016). Gendering Islamophobia, racism and white supremacy: Gendered violence against those who look Muslim. Dialogues in Human Geography, 6(2), 186-189.Isakjee, A. (2016). Dissonant belongings: The evolving spatial identities of young Muslim men in the UK. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 48(7), 1337-1353.Itaoui, R. (2016). The geography of Islamophobia in Sydney: Mapping the spatial imaginaries of young Muslims. Australian Geographer, 47(3), 261-279.Knowles, C. (2010). Theorising race and ethnicity: contemporary paradigms and perspectives. In Solomos, J. and Hill Collins, P. (eds.), The SAGE handbook of race and ethnic studies. London: SAGE, 23-42. Kobayashi, A. (2003). The construction of geographical knowledge racialization, spatialization. In K. Anderson, M. Domosh, S. Pile, and N. Thrift (eds.), The Handbook of Cultural Geography. London: Sage, 544¿556Jackson, P. (1987). The idea of 'race' and the geography of racism¿. In Race and racism: Essays in social geography. London: Allen and Anwin, 3-21.Mahtani, M. (2006). Challenging the ivory tower: proposing anti-racist geographies within the academy. Gender, Place & Culture, 13(1), 21-25.McKittrick, K. 2006: Demonic grounds: black women and the cartographies of struggle. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.McKittrick, K. (2011). On plantations, prisons, and a black sense of place. Social & Cultural Geography, 12(8), 947-963.Najib, K. (2021). Spaces of Islamophobia and spaces of inequality in Greater Paris. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 39(3), 606-625.Nast, H. J. (2000). Mapping the unconscious: Racism and the oedipal family. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 90(2), 215-255.Nayak, A. (2010). Race, affect, and emotion: young people, racism, and graffiti in the postcolonial English suburbs. Environment and planning A, 42(10), 2370-2392.Neely, B., & Samura, M. (2011). Social geographies of race: Connecting race and space. Ethnic and racial studies, 34(11), 1933-1952.Noxolo, P. (2020). Introduction: Towards a Black British geography?. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 45(3), 509-511.Price, P. L. (2010). At the crossroads: Critical race theory and critical geographies of race. Progress in human Geography, 34(2), 147-174.Pulido, L. (2002). Reflections on a white discipline. The Professional Geographer, 54(1), 42-49.Pulido, L. (2015). Geographies of race and ethnicity 1: White supremacy vs white privilege in environmental racism research. Progress in Human Geography, 39(6), 809-817.Rosenberg, R. (2017). The whiteness of gay urban belonging: Criminalizing LGBTQ youth of color in queer spaces of care. Urban Geography, 38(1), 137-148.Shabazz, R. (2015). Spatializing blackness: Architectures of confinement and black masculinity in Chicago. University of Illinois Press.Solomos, J., and Back, L. (2000). Theories of Race and Racism: a reader. London: RoutledgeWieviorka, M. (2008). ¿The Development of Racism in Europe¿. In Goldberg, T., and Solomos, J. (eds.), A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies. Oxford: Blackwell, 460-474Tolia-Kelly, D. P. (2010). The geographies of cultural geography I: identities, bodies and race. Progress in human geography, 34(3), 358-367.Wright, W. J. (2021). As above, so below: Anti-Black violence as environmental racism. Antipode, 53(3), 791-809.ails of course Reading List. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
A critical understanding of the principal theories and concepts around race and racialisations in geography. 2- An ability to apply these to real-world contexts. 3- Skills in work and time management to meet course deadlines. 4-Skills in academic communication (both written and oral). |
| Keywords | race,racism,cultural geography,social geography,intersectionality |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Alessandro Boussalem
Tel:
Email: Ale.Boussalem@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Eloise Hepburn
Tel: (0131 6)50 9847
Email: eloise.hepburn@ed.ac.uk |
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