Professor Charlene Makley
Office: 312 Vollum
Phone: 771-1112, ext. 7461
Office Hours: Tues/Thurs 4:40-6:00 pm, in person or via Zoom

Debates about forms of perceived or imagined social difference have a long history among people who identify as Chinese, including negotiations of diasporic relations with a Chinese homeland, now claimed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Those debates took on new urgency in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for Chinese intellectuals faced with the threat of Western colonialism, the imperative to establish a sovereign nation-state, and the concomitant rise of Western modernity discourses that were grounded in notions of essential biological differences hierarchizing human “races.” Yet since the emergence of the PRC as global power in the 2010s and President Xi Jinping’s effort to extend Chinese infrastructure development and investment programs to over 70 countries worldwide, transnational China has seen reintensified debates about social difference and the meaning of Chineseness, as well as the rise of new mass-mediated Han Chinese nationalisms. In this course we engage multimedia sources (texts, videos, images) to explore these most recent debates in historical context. We do this as a way to dialogue with critical race theory, and to delve into the high-stakes interpretive politics of “race” and “racism” transnationally. As many Chinese scholars and netizens ask: are these English language terms even applicable in the very different cultural, historical and political economic contexts of transnational China? We start with comparative theoretical debates about the nature of “race” as historically situated perceptions and claims about biological/embodied difference. We then turn to debates in recent Chinese contexts to consider for example the relationship between discourses of “race” and “nation,” the nature of “Han-ness,” the status of “ethnic minorities,” and the status of “blackness” amidst increased Sino-African engagement. Our goal will be to expand our understandings of the stakes and contexts of cosmologies and ontologies of social difference and inequality transnationally. This course meets the department’s area requirement.

Learning Outcomes

After taking this course, you should be able to:

  • Grasp and describe the basic premises of the anthropology of race and ethnicity.
  • Be able to define and distinguish among key terms such as "race," "racism," "racialization," "ethnicity," "nation," and "state".
  • Grasp and describe key moments in the historiography of "China," including debates about boundaries and Chineseness.
  • Understand the nature, history and stakes of anthropological and historical debates about the relationship between forms of governance, forms of media, and forms of social differentiation in China.
  • Apply anthropological approaches to race, ethnicity and racialization to your own writing and media projects.

Distribution Requirements:
This course can be used to fulfill one of your Group II "History and Social Science" distribution requirements. It accomplishes the following learning outcomes for the group:

  • Evaluate data and/or sources
  • Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other
  • Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.