Advanced Theories of Race, Nation & Ethnicity SOC 527                                  Winter 2001 Dr. Gonzalo Santos Office:         DDH - AA205  Office Hrs:   2:00 - 4:00 pm, MWF, or by                     appointment Phone:         (661) 664-2191 Web Site & Email:             http://www.csub.edu/~gsantos/          santos_class@csub.edu

• Anthony D. Smith, 1998. Nationalism and Modernism. London: Routledge.

• David G. Gutiérrez, 1995. Walls and Mirrors. Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

• Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic, eds., 2000. Critical Race Theory. The Cutting Edge, 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Course Description

This course attempts to advance our understanding of the historical trajectories of, and the analytical relationships among, the social constructs of race, nation, and ethnicity in the modern world-system. There are many ways to do this. In our case, we will first broadly explore the theories of nationalism that gained prominence in the 20th century social sciences. We will then take a sharp turn and come down to the "case" level of a people, the Mexican Americans in the United States, and analyze the interplay of (bi)nationhood, ethnicity, and migration. Lastly, we will ascend to the latest thinking on race in the United States, the so-called "Critical Race Theory," which intersects a variety of disciplines, among them law, culture studies, and sociology.

Class Presentations: The course will be run as a seminar; that is, at every session students will make -- on a rotational group basis -- formal class presentations on the assigned readings, to be followed by open discussions. Students will be grouped in groups of up to four students for this purpose. The individual presentations will be critical thinking assessments of the texts, roughly 10 to 12 minutes in duration each (students will be held up to that time limit!). A one-to-two page outline of each presentation will be distributed in class. Students in each group will be expected to communicate separately among themselves to divide up and organize their group presentations. They may choose to all assess the same texts, but on different grounds, as it lends itself in the first half of the course, or to divide the texts up, as it lends itself in the second half. Although at each particular session the assigned group will carry the major responsibility for presenting and leading the discussions, Dr. Santos will expect everyone to come to class fully prepared to discuss the assigned texts. Please be on time, especially the presenters. Presenters should bring enough copies of their presentation outlines to hand out to all in class.

Research Papers: There will be two group research paper projects assigned in this course, for students to turn in on February 14 and March 16, respectively. One must focus on an actual historical case study of peoplehood in the modern world (e.g., the African American Movement of the Twentieth Century, the fragmented, sequential nationalisms of the postcolonial Caribbean, etc.); the other must focus on a set of theoretical questions (e.g., Marx, Weber, and Wallerstein on the relation between capitalism and nationalism, globalization and peoplehood, etc.). Students must meet and discuss with Dr. Santos the overall themes for their projects and the potential topics for their papers, and obtain his approval in a timely fashion. Each group volume should be bound, contain a title page, a table of contents listing each paper title and author, and the actual papers in the same order as listed. No common bibliography or pagination required. Each individual paper should be between 15 and 20 pages long (apart from the bibliography and any data annex), double-spaced, font 10 or 12, one-inch margins. For the guidelines on how to write a good research term paper go directly to: http://www.csub.edu/~gsantos/Guide-Paper.html. Students will be allowed to submit rewrites of their first papers, if they so wish, on March 16, to improve their grades.

Grading: Each research paper is worth 35 points (30 points for the paper, 5 points for the group effort). The class presentations are worth 30 points as a whole (25 points individually, 5 points for the group effort). The final letter grade will be assigned, on a scale of 0 to 100, as follows:
 

Office Hours/E-Mail to Dr. Santos: All students are encouraged to visit Dr. Santos regularly during his posted office hours (see above) or by appointment, especially to ensure their individual presentation outlines are good and their research themes and papers are well chosen and organized, or to discuss any question they may have from the seminar or the texts.

Private but brief and to the point e-mail messages to Dr. Santos (NOT a substitute for office visits, please) may be sent to: santos_class@csub.edu. Finally, students may leave messages at Dr. Santos' phone if for any reason they will be absent or have any urgent need to communicate with him.