Introductory description

This module introduces students to the conceptual history of race, attending to critical contributions in the philosophical and scientific literatures that have produced the race concepts shaping the past and today’s world, and to the sites of the body on which race concepts have to congeal and be adjudicated. The first section of the module examines theories of racial origin and categorization from the classical period through the 19th century, exploring how these theories come to interact with one another and take newly consequential forms with the Age of Discovery and the genocidal, colonial and slaving projects that emerge from it. The second examines particular sites on the body, how they come to be associated with particular subcomponents of racial ideology, and how this association creates contradictions and limits that trigger, in various different historical contexts, related kinds of politics of race management.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Part 1: Taxa

Week 1: Introduction
Linnaeus. 1735. Homo in Systema Naturae
Aristotle, Book 1 of Politics

Week 2: Places and Natures
Hippocrates, On Airs, Waters, and Places
Ptolemy, excerpt from Geography
Galen, De Temperamentis

Week 3: Climate
Bodin, J. excerpts from 1566 Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem and 1576 Les Six livres de la République
Hegel, G.W.F. 1837. “The Nature of a State” in Lectures on the Philosophy of World History

Week 4: Civilization
Pope Nicholas V. 1452. Dum Diversas
Gobineau, A. 1853. The Inequality of Human Races.

Week 5: Fate
Bible, Genesis 9 (KJV)
Seligman, C. G. 1939. excerpts from The Races of Africa. London, Thornton Butterworth
Ibn Khaldun, 1377, excerpt from The Muqaddimah
Goldenberg, D. M. 1997. “The Curse of Ham: a Case of Rabbinic Racism?” in Jack Salzman and Cornel West, eds, Struggles in the Promised Land. Oxford University Press. pp 21-51

Part 2: Object Problems

Week 7: Skulls and Intelligence
Combe, G. 1843. excerpts from A System of Phrenology.
Morton, S.G. excerpts from 1839 Crania Americana, 1844 Crania Aegyptiaca
Tiedemann, F. 1836. On the Brain of the Negro, Compared with That of the European and the Orang-Outang. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (126): 497-527
Poskett, J. 2019. Introduction to Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920. University of Chicago Press.
Conklin, A. 2013. “Skulls on Display”, in In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850–1950. Cornell University Press

Week 8: Bodies, Strength and Sexuality

Wilson, T., 1890. Anthropology at the Paris Exposition in 1889. Report of the United States National Museum for the year ending June 30, 1890.
Beddoe, J. 1861. On the Physical Characteristics of the Jews. Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London 1:222-237
Kopernicki, I. 1871. Anatomico-Anthropological Observations upon the Body of a Negro. The Journal of Anthropology 1(3): 245-258
Hrdlicka, A. 1898. Physical Differences between White and Colored Children. American Anthropologist 11(11): 347-350
Qureshi, S. 2004. Displaying Sara Baartman, the ‘Hottentot Venus’. History of Science, 42(2):233-257.
Briggs. 2000. The race of hysteria: "Overcivilization" and the "savage" woman in late nineteenth-century obstetrics and gynecology. American Quarterly, 52(2):246-273.
Marriott, D. 1996. Bordering on: The black penis. Textual Practice 10(1):9-28

Week 9: Color, Evil and Sickness
Bible, Leviticus 13 (KJV)
Rush, B. 1799. Observations Intended to Favour a Supposition That the Black Color (As It Is Called) of the Negroes Is Derived from the Leprosy. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4: 289-297
Schamberg, J. F. 1899. The Nature of the Leprosy of the Bible: from a Medical and Biblical Point of View. The Biblical World 13(3): 162-169
Pastoureau, M. 2009. “In the Devil’s Color”, in Black: The History of a Color. Princeton University Press
Mitchel, D. & S. Snyder. 2003. The Eugenic Atlantic: race, disability, and the making of an international Eugenic science, 1800–1945. Disability and Society 18(7): 843-64
Bachrach, S. 2004. In the Name of Public Health — Nazi Racial Hygiene. New England Journal of Medicine 351(5): 417-420

Week 10: Appearance, Purity and Pollution

Royal Anthropological Institute, 1864. Miscegenation*. The Anthropological Review 2(5): 116-121
Kristeva, J. 1982. “Approaching Abjection” in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia University Press
Sexton, J. 2003. The Consequences of Race Mixture. Social Identities 9(2): 241-275.
Morgan, J. L. 2018. Partus sequitur ventrem: Law, Race, and Reproduction in Colonial Slavery. Small Axe 22 (1): 1–17
Edwards, J. 1999. “The Beginnings of a Scientific Theory of Race? Spain, 1450–1600” in Stillman Y. K. and N. A. Stillman, eds, From Iberia to Diaspora. Leiden: Brill
Burk, R. L. 2017. “Purity and Impurity of Blood in Early Modern Iberia”, in Muñoz-Basols, J., L. Lonsdale & M. Delgado (eds) The Routledge Companion to Iberian Studies. Routledge.
Villella, P. B. 2011. “Pure and Noble Indians, Untainted by Inferior Idolatrous Races”: Native Elites and the Discourse of Blood Purity in Late Colonial Mexico. Hispanic American Historical Review 91 (4): 633–663

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Understand and demonstrate coherent and detailed subject knowledge and professional competencies in the conceptual history of ‘race’, with a focus on from the classical period through to developments in the 19th century.
• Deploy accurately standard techniques of literary analysis and enquiry within the discipline. In particular, the student should be able to trace the histories and implications of different primary texts in the history of the race concept and their impact.
• Demonstrate a conceptual understanding of, and develop sustained arguments regarding how racial ideas have developed in conversation with political and historical pressures, and in relationship to pre-existing canons of race thinking.
• Appreciate the uncertainty, ambiguity and limitations of knowledge in the discipline: the student should be able to both position themselves and intervene critically in the field.
• Make appropriate use of scholarly reviews and primary sources, including philosophical and historical sources, from across the module.
• Apply their knowledge and understanding in order to initiate and carry out an extended written project.

Indicative reading list

Linnaeus. 1735. Systema Naturae
Aristotle, Politics
Hippocrates, On Airs, Waters, and Places
Ptolemy, Geography
Galen, De Temperamentis
Hegel, G.W.F. 1837. “The Nature of a State” in Lectures on the Philosophy of World History
Pope Nicholas V. 1452. Dum Diversas
Gobineau, A. 1853. The Inequality of Human Races.
Bible (KJV)
Seligman, C. G. 1939. The Races of Africa. London, Thornton Butterworth
Combe, G. 1843. A System of Phrenology.
Morton, S.G. 1839 Crania Americana, 1844 Crania Aegyptiaca
Tiedemann, F. 1836. On the Brain of the Negro, Compared with That of the European and the Orang-Outang. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (126): 497-527
Poskett, J. 2019. Introduction to Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920. University of Chicago Press.
Beddoe, J. 1861. On the Physical Characteristics of the Jews. Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London 1:222-237
Kopernicki, I. 1871. Anatomico-Anthropological Observations upon the Body of a Negro. The Journal of Anthropology 1(3): 245-258
Qureshi, S. 2004. Displaying Sara Baartman, the ‘Hottentot Venus’. History of Science, 42(2):233-257.
Briggs. 2000. The race of hysteria: "Overcivilization" and the "savage" woman in late nineteenth-century obstetrics and gynecology. American Quarterly, 52(2):246-273.
Marriott, D. 1996. Bordering on: The black penis. Textual Practice 10(1):9-28
Rush, B. 1799. Observations Intended to Favour a Supposition That the Black Color (As It Is Called) of the Negroes Is Derived from the Leprosy. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4: 289-297
Schamberg, J. F. 1899. The Nature of the Leprosy of the Bible: from a Medical and Biblical Point of View. The Biblical World 13(3): 162-169
Pastoureau, M. 2009. “In the Devil’s Color”, in Black: The History of a Color. Princeton University Press
Mitchel, D. & S. Snyder. 2003. The Eugenic Atlantic: race, disability, and the making of an international Eugenic science, 1800–1945. Disability and Society 18(7): 843-64
Kristeva, J. 1982. “Approaching Abjection” in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia University Press
Sexton, J. 2003. The Consequences of Race Mixture. Social Identities 9(2): 241-275.
Morgan, J. L. 2018. Partus sequitur ventrem: Law, Race, and Reproduction in Colonial Slavery. Small Axe 22 (1): 1–17

Subject specific skills

This module is designed to offer students a foundation to the histories of ‘race’ as a concept and the various objects, materials and ideas around which the concept has been organized. It will introduce students to critical and influential developments in racialist thinking, with a focus from the classical period through to the 19th century. The module will enable students to develop an understanding of how racial ideas have developed in conversation with political and historical pressures, and in relationship to pre-existing canons of race thinking.

Transferable skills

Students will learn to make appropriate use of scholarly reviews and primary sources, including scientific and philosophical texts from the multiple locations and periods covered on the course. They will further enhance techniques of research. They will be able to apply their knowledge and understanding in order to initiate and carry out an extended written project.