Course Details

This course examines issues of cultural appreciation and appropriation within the context of comparative racial formation. We will close read literary and cultural texts on racial performance, including fiction, drama, photography, film, and music. Questions to be considered are: How do we “perform” race? How do our expressions of an identity present race as a legible index and produce it as a performative state? What kind of intimate sociality and sociability do our cross-racial acts articulate and at the same time disavow? How could we redress racial violence in the practice of cultural borrowing? We will also explore the global migration of American notions of race, as seen, for example, in K-Pop music videos and Japanese fashion. Readings may include work by David Henry Hwang, Nella Larsen, Anna Deavere Smith, and Kenji Yoshino, along with secondary scholarship by Judith Butler, Shilpa Davé, Eric Lott, and Richard Schechner. This course is open to students from all majors. No prerequisites are required, just an open mind.