About the course

“The Critique of the Concept of Racism” is an advanced undergraduate seminar that will critically interrogate the concept of racism. We designed the course, but its meaning to will you depend on your engagement of the ideas and readings and that of your peers. In the main you will get out of it what you put into it. The course is a seminar which is, as stated in Wikipedia, “a form of academic instruction….[that] has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some particular subject, in which everyone present is requested to actively participate. This is often accomplished through an ongoing Socratic dialogue with a seminar leader or instructor, or through a more formal presentation of research….The idea behind the seminar system is to familiarize students more extensively with the methodology of their chosen subject and also to allow them to interact with examples of the practical problems that always occur during research work. It is essentially a place where assigned readings are discussed, questions can be raised and debates can be conducted.”

“We” Who?

Your course instructors are Amilcar Shabazz (shabazz@afroam.umass.edu) and Michael McEachrane(mceachrane@gmail.com). As co-teachers we offer a unique  fusion of scholarly disciplines and interdisciplinary orientations and different educational backgrounds and life experiences.  A little information on us is provided below:

Dr. Amilcar Shabazz is professor and chair of the illustrious W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and teaches in the area of historical studies with an emphasis on the political economy of social and cultural movements, education, and public history. His book Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), received numerous honors including the T.R. Fehrenbach Book Award. His newest book, co-edited with Celia R. Daileader and Rhoda E. Johnson, is Women & Others: Perspective on Race, Gender, and Empire (Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2007). Shabazz has also published The Forty Acres Documents, a sourcebook on reparations, along with journal articles, book chapters, reviews and writings in publications as diverse as The Source Magazine of Hip-Hop Music, Culture & Politics. An international scholar, he is a Fulbright Senior Specialist and has done work in Brazil, Ghana, Japan, Cuba, Mali, France, Nicaragua, and Jamaica. Presently, he is completing an historical biography entitled “Master of the Blast: Carter Wesley and the Struggles of a Radical Pragmatist.”

Dr. Michael McEachrane is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Among his research interests are the philosophy of psychology and the philosophy of race. He earned his Ph.D. at Åbo Akademi University, Finland, in 2006, and has held a teaching appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor at the City University of New York, 2006-2008. He has published a number of articles and has co-edited the anthology Emotions & Understanding: Wittgensteinian Perspectives(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and Sverige och de Andra: Postkoloniala Perspektiv (2001). His current research includes Frantz Fanon, the ethics of anti-racism, as well as two book projects, both of them anthologies, Across Camps: Debating Philosophical Methods and Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Engaging Blackness in Northern Europe.

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