Tutorial: Color, Culture and Class

Race thinking dominates ways in which people in the United States differentiate groups of people from each other. This tutorial focuses on associations between color and culture in order to examine how racial meanings are constructed and made comprehensible as well as how they are routed through representations of class. Using a combination of texts -- academic articles, films, newspapers and advertisements -- we will explore representations of "whiteness," "blackness," and other "race-d" identities in the public arena. Throughout the semester we will interrogate the language, ideas and assumptions that give meaning to the different ways we perceive the world around us and through which we understand our individual experiences.