UC Berkeley, Fall 2015

African American Studies 27AC

Lives of Struggle: Minorities in a Majority Culture

Professor Michael Cohen
Email: mmcohen@berkeley.edu
Lectures: T,TH 12:30-2 in North Gate 105
Office Hrs: Tues, 2:30-4:00 in 674 Barrows

G SI: O livia Young

Email: oliviakyoung@ berkeley.edu
Sections: 101 Tu 9-10A, 105 Latimer
102 Tu 10-11A, 123 W heeler
G SI: David M aldonado
Email: david.maldonado@ berkeley.edu
Sections: 103 W 10-11A, B5 Hearst Annex
104 W 11-12P, 104 Barrows
G SI: Christina Bush
Email: cbush618@ berkeley.edu
Sections: 105 W 4-5P, 106 W heeler

Introduction:
This course takes up the question of race in the United States of America from 1492 to the Present.
We will do this primarily through reading autobiographies of racial justice activists along side several
key works of theory and history. Our question is simply what is race and how has it shaped the lives of
people of color in the United States? How do individual lives, lives of important writers, intellectuals
and activists communicate a larger, even representative, experience of all minority populations living
within a majority culture? We will further ask questions about the relationship between race, class and
gender; race, nation and politics; racism, war and violence; immigration and labor; and the history of
global social and intellectual movements opposed to forms of racial oppression.
Grading and Assignments:
Attendance and Participation (25% of grade). Attendance in lectures and sections is required
every week. This portion of your grade is determined by your GSI, and you must pass your section
grade in order to pass this class.
Short Papers (2 papers, 1st paper is 10%, 2nd paper is 15% of grade). You will write two short
papers (5-7 pages) on topics set by the GSIs. They are due in class on Oct 6th and Dec 3th.
Exams (Midterm exam is 20% and Final exam is 30% of grade). You will take two exams, the first
in class on October 8th and a final exam held on Friday, December 18th. The exam will consist of
term and concept IDs, short essays on the readings and a longer synthesizing essay.
Course Books:
These books are available the Cal Book Store for purchase.
Fredrick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom
Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers
Carlos Bulosan, America is in the Heart
Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
*syllabus items with this mark are available as .pdf files on the bCourse page

UC Berkeley, Fall 2015

African American Studies 27AC

LECTURE SCHEDULE
Week 1: Introduction
8/27: Welcome and Introduction
Week 2: Keywords: Race and Racial Formations
FIRST SECTIONS MEET THIS WEEK
9/1: Talking about Race in the United States
9/3: Race, Culture and Hegemony
Reading: *Omi and Winant, Racial Formation
*Antonio Gramsci, The Intellectuals
Week 3: Keywords: Race and Representation
9/8: Seeing Race and Representation
9/10: Race and Double Consciousness
Reading: *W.E.B. Dubois, Of our Spiritual Strivings from Souls of Black Folk
*Franz Fanon, The Fact of Blackness from Black Skin White Masks
Week 4: History: From First Contact to the Constitution
9/15: Historical Periodization and Racial Formations
9/17: Inventing Race from Columbus to the American Revolution
Reading: *The logs of Christopher Columbus
*Barbara Fields, Race, Ideology and Slavery in the United States
*The Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States of America
Week 5: Race and Politics: Slavery
9/22: Slavery, Race and American Democracy
9/24: Slavery and Resistance
Reading: Fredrick Douglass, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July (p. 340-344)
Fredrick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (start reading)
Week 6: Autobiography: Fredrick Douglass
9/29: Women, Race and Slavery
10/1: Reading My Bondage and My Freedom
Reading: Fredrick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (finish reading)
Week 7: Mid-Term Exam
10/6: Catch Up / Review - FIRST PAPER DUE IN CLASS
10/8: IN CLASS EXAM

UC Berkeley, Fall 2015

African American Studies 27AC

Week 8: History: Mass Immigration

10/13: Remaking Race in America in 1877
10/15: Immigration and Urban America
Reading: Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers (start reading)
Week 9: Autobiography: Anzia Yezierska
10/20: Race, Gender and Assimilation
10/22: Reading Bread Givers
Reading: Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers (finish reading)
Week 10: History: American Empire
10/27: Empire and Race in the American West
10/29: Empire and Race Overseas
Reading: Carlos Bulosan, America is in the Heart (start reading)
Week 11: Autobiography: Carlos Bulosan
11/3: Reading America is in the Heart
11/5: Race and the Pacific War
Reading: Carlos Bulosan, America is in the Heart (finish reading)
Week 12: History: The Long Freedom Struggle
11/10: Jim Crow America
11/12: The Civil Rights Movement
Reading: Autobiography of Malcolm X (start reading)
Week 13: Autobiography: Malcolm X
11/17: Global Liberation
11/19: Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Reading: Autobiography of Malcolm X (keep reading)
Week 14: History: Unfinished Struggles
11/24: The Great Backlash and Colorblindness
11/26: THANKSGIVING
Reading: Autobiography of Malcolm X (finish reading)
Week 15: Keywords: Citizen
12/1: #BlackLivesMatter & Reading Citizen
12/3: What do we do now? SECOND PAPER DUE IN CLASS
Reading: Claudia Rankine, Citizen
FINAL EXAM: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18TH, 8:00-11:00AM

UC Berkeley, Fall 2015

African American Studies 27AC

SO M E CLASS RULES
1. Silence your cell phones before you enter the class room. If your phone goes off at any time
during class, or I see you playing with your cell phone during lecture, I reserve the right to angrily kick
you out of class.
2. Do not sit in class and surf the web or play with your phone. It is distracting and disrespectful to the
professor and to the people who sit around you. If you want to do those things, please stay home and
play on your devices there. Coming to your classes and learning to make yourself a more complete
self is why you are in college in the first place. So if you would rather surf or text than come to this
class, then either find a better class or go get a job in a cubicle farm already.
3. PLAGIARISM is the unethical copying of someone elses words and ideas and passing it off as your
own. QUOTING and CITATION are the repetition of someone elses words as evidence or reference
in which full credit is given to the original author through a footnote or bibliographic citation.
Quotation is an essential part of research and scholarly argument. Plagiarism is cheating. And now,
thanks to Google and other resources, plagiarism is really easy to detect. Students caught plagiarizing
on any submitted writing will FAIL the course and may be referred to the university disciplinary board.
4. Students who know they will be missing section for pre-scheduled events need to inform their GSI in
advance. If you cannot make the scheduled mid-term you need to let us know two weeks in advance.
Any student who misses two or more sections without an excuse will automatically fail the course.
5. Late papers will be docked a grade per day. No papers will be accepted after the
last day of class.
6. Exams are closed book and electronic devices of any kind may not be used during exams. Students
caught using phones in an exam will receive a zero for the exam.

AN D LASTLY .
In order to encourage a productive discussion of admittedly difficult issues, we need to
RESPECT everyone in this classroom by listening to each other and treating differences of opinion,
attitude and experience as something to be learned from. So we will take what we say with each other
at face value, discussing the merits of potentially conflicting ideas as ideas and not as hidden
existential expressions of someones character or spiritual essence. In other words, we will deal with
what people say and do in class, not with what you think they are. This means that someone can say
something that is offensive, even racist, without automatically being accused of being a racist. In class
discussions we all have the right to be wrong and learn from our mistakes.