Meaning, Mattering, and Black Being-in-the-World: Towards a Critical Theory of Race and Value

This course interrogates the ways scholars in the social sciences and humanities have conceptualized and theorized value, and the curious absence of race/racism from this discourse. Drawing from scholarship in the fields of history, anthropology, African diaspora studies, and (ethno)musicology, students will develop a better understanding of the interrelationship between race and value and the distinct ways that race has been one of the most pervasive 'value regimes' in the making of the modern world. Topics include the transatlantic slave trade and plantation societies in the Americas; intersections of race with science and technology; and black radical politics and expressive culture.