Race, Class and Gender (250-0-20)

Instructors

Marquis Bey

Meeting Info

University Hall 121: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

This course examines race, class, and gender as living frameworks that organize social life—structuring labor, belonging, violence, desire, and recognition. Working through intersectional theory, we will ask how these categories intersect and why they so often appear natural, inevitable, or self-evident. We will read foundational thinkers (including Kimberlé Crenshaw) alongside work that traces the colonial and modern roots of these categories as technologies of governance and social order. At the same time, we will take seriously the analytic usefulness of these terms for understanding how power distributes vulnerability, advantage, and "common sense." Finally, we will engage abolitionist and left traditions that ask a further question: not only how these categories operate, but what it might mean to undo some of the very categories we use to name injustice.

Learning Objectives

Explain how race, class, and gender are historically produced categories rather than timeless "natural" facts

Analyze how institutions (law, labor markets, education, medicine, policing) distribute vulnerability and advantage through race/class/gender logics

Interpret primary and theoretical texts through close reading: identifying theses, evidence, assumptions, and stakes

Trace the colonial and modern genealogies of classification (how "difference" gets organized, measured, and governed)

Evaluate competing political strategies—recognition/inclusion, reform, and abolitionist approaches—articulating tradeoffs and tensions with care and precision

Class Materials (Required)

All materials will be provided, at no additional cost, in a digital format

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: PRE-REG: Reserved for Black Studies majors & minors.