RACIAL HISTORIES OF EUROPE (15th- 21st C

After being somewhat eclipsed after World War II, race has reemerged as a central preoccupation in Western European politics, making it more important than ever to understand how the concept and practices have developed and how they have shaped the history of Europe.

In this class, we will focus on historiographical debates about race, including how and when it emerged as an ideology and how it has permeated the history of modern Europe.  We will emphasize the histories of Spain, France, Britain and Germany. We will focus on a set of connected debates, starting with the relationship between race and modernity. Was race a product of internal European dynamics in the late middle-ages related to the status of Christians of Jewish and Muslim origin or of social relations in the Americas following the conquest and the Atlantic slave trade? How much does the history of race share with the history of capitalism and imperialism? What was the role of scientific and artistic representations in the production of race? How was race connected to class, gender and sex? How and when did it become a central dimension of historical narratives and especially of how Europeans told their history? How shall we understand the relationship between antisemitism and other forms of racism in the longue durée history of Europe? How have historians analyzed the role of racism in the final solution and, conversely, how has race been transformed after the holocaust and into the present?