ENGL 6250: Studies in Brownness

Section Description:
While it has become increasingly common to talk of “brownness” as a racial and cultural category in the U.S., the term remains largely under-theorized. This course invites students to take part an emerging conversation about the meanings of brownness, its conceptual and material histories from the eighteenth century, which witnessed the emergence of race science and rapid colonial expansion, to the present day. In what ways, if any, does the idea of brownness cohere as a concept, and how does it relate to more commonly discussed ideas of whiteness and Blackness? In what ways does the term work for or against rigid notions of racial difference? And, perhaps most important, what, if any, emancipatory potential does the term offer us? Readings include José Esteban Muñoz, The Sense of Brown; José Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race; Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back; W.E.B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn; Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones; Kevin Young, Brown: Poems; Vijay Prashad, The Karma of Brown Folk; and Moon Charania, Archive of Tongues.