HIST 385
Race and Inequality in the American City Spring 2016
Division II
Cross-listed LEAD 313 / AFR 367 / AMST 367
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

In the past half-century, American cities have gotten both much richer and much poorer. The making of “luxury cities” has gone hand-in-hand with persistent, concentrated poverty, extreme racial segregation, mass incarceration, and failing public services—social problems borne primarily by people of color. This course will examine social inequalities in American cities from the Second World War to the present, with particular attention to the racialization of these inequalities. Among the topics we will cover are: housing and employment discrimination; deindustrialization; urban renewal; the War on Crime and the War on Drugs (and their consequence, mass incarceration); education; and environmental sustainability. We will ask: How have city leaders and social movements engaged with urban problems? How have they tried to make cities more decent, just, and sustainable? Under what circumstances has positive leadership produced beneficial outcomes, and in what circumstances has it produced perverse outcomes? In the written assignments, students will apply scholarly knowledge to propose a public history exhibit and to weigh in on a contemporary urban issue in the form of an op-ed piece.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 3535
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: two short (5-6 page) essays and a longer paper (8-10 pages) with presentation
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: Leadership Studies and Africana Studies concentrators; American Studies and History majors
Distributions: Division II
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
LEAD 313 Division II AFR 367 Division II HIST 385 Division II AMST 367 Division II
Attributes: AMST Comp Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora
AMST Space and Place Electives
HIST Group F Electives - U.S. + Canada
LEAD American Domestic Leadership
LEAD Facets or Domains of Leadership

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