Keisha Fikes

23310. Anthropology of Travel. The objective of this course is to consider how the recognition of difference is coordinated through transnational networks of state monitored travel. Moving away from disparate travel themes like tourism (which inadvertently presume the unrestricted freedom of travelling subjects), or immigration (which inadvertently presume and produce politically subordinant travelling subjects), this course specifically addresses the history of the systems of movement (i.e., enslaved, voluntary and leisure) that effectively transmit the meaning and significance of citizenship and belonging. In this sense, nothing about travel is taken for granted, as the course observes how ones relationship to the possibilities and conditions of travel can interpret ones social location and/or citizenry. The organization of the literature can be read as a political narrative. The narrative suggests that spaces are delimited or mapped not simply in connection to nation borders, but via the bodies or citizenries that can and can't traverse them, at any given moment. Focusing upon the movements of colonials and colonial subjects from the 18th Century to decolonization, in addition to contemporary issues around immigrant, exile and leisure travel, this course details how travel regulations locally tailor social life. It questions how we can begin to consider how practices and conditions of spatial mobility are historically constitutive elements in the logics that not only reference difference among subjects, but which empower the meaning the space itself, in relation to the ways that differently restricted subjects are perceived and hence allowed to occupy, engage and embody space, transnationally.

50400. Race, Geography and Transatlantic Discourse. This course observes the transitioning domain of Transatlantic discourse, in relation to the static treatment of blackness and Africa within this discourse, from the late 19 th Century to the present. Upon problematizing the history of the relationship between the concepts of race and racism in diaspora-identified research, the objective is acknowledgement of the theoretical consequences that have followed unclear references to the connections between a) the racial experience of one’s subject location, and b) the forms/systems of practice that publicly recognize subject locations. As such, the course is likewise attentive to the history of blurred references that have difficulty discerning forms of biological determinism (i.e., origins histories and tradition) from the practices that effectively produce (post) colonial relationships/citizenries, within Black Diaspora scholarship. Noting the processes that create and rely upon such ambiguity, the course considers the persistent reliance on under-assessed references to space and geography in connection to ideals of racial authenticity and community, be the agenda deemed racist or progressive. Through emphasis on the works of social theorists such as Fanon, Mbembe, Mudimbe, Gilroy, B.F. Williams, Scott, and Butler, among others, this course questions how future projects on race and racism can conceptually undo – while continuing to politicize – how references to blackness that link ideas of spatial belonging, origins, and bodies perhaps immobilize the social potential of diasporic criticism within the social sciences and humanities.

51505. Tropics Logics, Anthropology and Twentieth Century Portuguese Colonialism. Within the contemporary social science literatures on the former Portuguese colonies, it seems that there is no escaping the theme of miscegenation. Whether criticized as strategy or myth, the treatment of race, be it categorized as mixed or pure, is generally analytically compromised; the discursive properties that culturally reference racial distinctions continue to treat racial differences as ontologically real. To complicate matters, after subjects of the Empire are deconstructed, the Portuguese colono is likewise racially interrogated for the authenticity of its own racial purity, as white and European. The consequence, it seems, is the curious representation of the Portuguese colonial project as somehow incomplete or simplistic, arguably in response to the centrality of this bio-social narrative in the description of colonial prowess. Importantly, the objective of this course is not about dislodging this emphasis, nor about presuming some "truth" about racial origins. Rather, this course considers the political processes that have historically "fated," at least for the moment, continued theoretical reflections on the myths and contradictions of miscegenation, specifically in Cape Verde, Angola, Portugal and in Brazil. In essence, this course is about the "epidermalization" (Fanon) of recollections associated with the Portuguese colonial project, within contemporary considerations of the Empire.

55100. Writing Race in Ethnography. Ethnographies that use race as a mode of analysis run the risk of positing contradictory arguments. In theory race is treated as socially constructed and thus should appear in tandem with the circumstances that produce something or some-body as racially meaningful or racially real. However, the method of writing race in ethnography (whether about material or subjective reality) tends to identify or label subjects as racially real within arguments that precede the presentation of circumstances that are productive of raced reality. Coupled with how one should manage history and memory in practice, while narrating race operations in the immediate political moment, theory and practice within race analysis rarely parallel each other. The goal of this course is to ponder the nature of this dilemma; we will address ethnographic themes (i.e., nationalist culture, colonialism and multiculturalism) that variably utilize race in analysis.

55200. Lefebvre, Geography & Subjectivity. This course addresses philosophical perspectives on the idea of the dialectic, or dialectic logic. We will assess this analytic apparatus through select works of Henri Lefebvre, in addition to the works of his primary interlocutors. The course begins by addressing competing approaches to dialectic logic, i.e., subjective and materialist models which informed early Lefebvrian arguments. Next, we will observe how Lefebvrian critiques of existentialist and structuralist approaches to dialectic logic converged within the formulation of his multi-dimensional analytic approach to sociality in the The Production of Space. The overall objective is to acquire an expanded understanding of the tense relationship between 'humanist' and 'political economy' approaches to relationally conceived social phenomena. In the later portion of the course we will read two ethnographies that use this tension as the very method and site of analysis. The course is designed for students focusing on 'identity', contemporary nationalisms and migration.