This concentration focuses on the social construction of race and ethnicity and the complex way these concepts have operated in history, including how race and ethnicity have been defined, by whom, and to what ends. Encountering the past through diverse sources enables students to recognize structures and habits of inequality that have profound implications for people across the globe. Courses will explore the contradictions and inconsistencies in the definitions and uses of race and ethnicity across a variety of historical topics such as identity and citizenship, war and peace, migration and refugees, art and popular culture, religion, science, politics, and economics.

Student Learning Outcomes:

  • Recognize underlying systems that have perpetuated inequalities across diverse social categories that intersect with one another.  
  • Identify and analyze the ways the construction of race and ethnicity has operated through economic, social, political, legal, scientific, and cultural institutions to organize human experience across time and space. 
  • Develop skills in historical thinking, in particular an appreciation for the relationship between continuity and change, and an ability to compare and analyze discrete historical contexts of social inequalities. 
  • Demonstrate mastery of historians’ scholarship and original sources on race including their significance for our understanding of the past and present by crafting well-supported historical narratives, arguments, and reports of research findings.