How might we think of race not as a fixed historical category but as a social construction that has been made and remade throughout U.S. history; in other words, how might we move beyond talking about “race” to discussing “racial formations”? What does it mean to consider visual objects—photographs, advertisements, films, buildings, product packaging, paintings, and the like—as contributions to these ever-evolving racial formations?
The relationship between these questions brings students in this course into contact with two contemporary approaches to history and invites them to consider visual images as both representations of and agents of racial change. The goals of this course are two-fold: one, students should gain an understanding of how to apply the related concepts of racial formations and visual culture to U.S. history, in other words, they will learn “how to ‘look’ at American history;” and two, students will employ these approaches as they read and analyze visual sources as historical documents.