History of Anthropology

 
Session 3: "Race, slavery, ethnography"
 
This session considers two very different texts—one ethnographic, one historical—that consider racism, race science, and slavery as central structures of "enlightened" industrial modernity:
 

• Deborah A. Thomas, Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair (Duke University Press, 2019).
• Andrew S. Curran, The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).

 
Below are suggested excerpts for a short, medium, and longer reading, depending on the time readers have available (all readings/excerpts are available in the zip file below if you are logged into your CHSTM account):
 

SHORT VERSION: 56 pp

• Thomas: introduction excerpts pp. 1-7, 14-19; chapter 1 excerpts pp. 22-32, 52-60
• Curran: chapter 4 excerpts pp. 167-86, 190-94, 199-204

 
MEDIUM VERSION: 78 pp

• Thomas: add preface pp. xi-xv
• Curran: add preface pp. ix-xi and introduction excerpt pp. 1-15

 
LONG VERSION: 150 pp

• Thomas: read full preface + introduction + chapter 1
• Curran: read full preface + introduction + chapter 4

For those interested in hearing the oral testimony of Tivoli Gardens community members captured by Thomas (in ch 1 excerpts), see also: https://www.tivolistories.com/bearing-witness.html.
 
Additional readings:

• David Graeber, “Turning Modes of Production inside out: Or, Why Capitalism Is a Transformation of Slavery,” Critique of Anthropology 26, no. 1 (2006): 61–85.
• Terence D. Keel, “Religion, Polygenism and the Early Science of Human Origins,” History of the Human Sciences 26, no. 2 (2013): 3–32.
• Kavita Philip, Civilizing Natures: Race, Resources, and Modernity in Colonial South India (Rutgers University Press, 2004). [Excerpt: introduction]

 
Session 2: "Race in American anthropology"
 
This session focuses on work by Lee D. Baker to explore the history of American anthropology and its role in creating, reinforcing, and challenging racial categories. We selected a forthcoming piece  from Baker to capture a picture of American anthropology that is wider than its predominant figure, Franz Boas (around which many histories have been narrated). However, recognizing the continuing importance of Boas studies, we will also read an essay by Geoff Bil that reviews 3 major recent works on Boas and offers a critical evaluation of the direction Boas histories are going.
 
Main readings:

• Lee D. Baker, "W.E.B. Du Bois & Anthropology." (forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of W.E.B. Du Bois) 
• Geoff Bil, “Boas in the Age of BLM and Idle No More: Re-Evaluting the Boasian Legacy,” History of Anthropology Review 44 (September 14, 2020).

 
Additional readings:

• Ira Bashkow, “The Boas Circle vs. White Supremacy,” History of Anthropology Review 44 (June 15, 2020), http://histanthro.org/reviews/the-boas-circle-vs-white-supremacy/.
• Lee D. Baker, From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520211681/from-savage-to-negro. [Introduction and chapter 5, "Rethinking Race at the Turn of the Century: W.E.B. Du Bois and Franz Boas," provided below.]

Please use pass code 989255 to join the meeting
Session 1: "Anthropology and the universal liberal human"
 
In this first session, led by Rosanna Dent (NJIT), we will read pieces by Ryan Cecil Jobson and Sylvia Wynter that consider how anthropology is mired by problems of the (so-called) universal liberal human. Readings for this opening session are longer than we anticipate future sessions will be (normally we aim for ~50pp max). Given the length of Wynter's piece, we have provided Elisabeth Paquette's encyclopedia article for a guide to Wynter's work. PDFs of all readings (main and additional) are provided in the "Session 1 Readings."
 
Main readings:

• Ryan Cecil Jobson, “The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn: Sociocultural Anthropology in 2019,” American Anthropologist 122, no. 2 (2020): 259–71, https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13398.
• Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument,” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 257–337, https://doi.org/10/d2js45.

 
Additional readings:

• Elisabeth Paquette, “Wynter and Decolonization,” in Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory, ed. Michael A. Peters (Singapore: Springer, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_476-1.
• Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús and Jemima Pierre, “Special Section: Anthropology of White Supremacy (introduction),” American Anthropologist 122, no. 1 (2020): 65–75, https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13351.