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Fall 2025 Graduate Catalog
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AFS 504 - Racialized Oppressions and the Idea of Humanity
When one reads accounts of slavery, genocide, the systematic denial of rights to a group because of a racial identity, the question always arises whether the oppressors view the racialized other as fully human? This course will explore this question and what it means to view an individual or group as “fully human.” How have philosophical understandings of the moral importance and the moral meaning of “humanity” served to exacerbate, moderate or fight against racial oppression? How does racial and gender oppression compare in this respect? Is there a comparison to be made between racial oppression and the treatment accorded to disabled people with respect to the understanding of what it is to be human? Does shifting the ground from a biologically-based concept such as “humanity” to a philosophical concept of “personhood” serve to justify or serve as a tool against these identity-based oppressions? Does shifting the ground justify the analogy of racism with the abuse of animals, as in the idea of “speciesism”? We will explore as many of these questions as interest dictates and time permits.
3 credits
Grading Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)
Offered Fall
Required Permission from advisor required.
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