"A Class on Whiteness?" Investigating the Need for Anti-Racist Critical Whiteness Studies at the University Level
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Despite the emergence of formal “critical whiteness studies” in academia over the last twenty years, there currently remains a dearth of research on the teaching of whiteness studies. Additionally, there remains a lack of formal engagement with the topics of race and whiteness, especially by white students in universities across the United States. This paper investigates the potential for implementing anti-racist critical whiteness studies at Stanford University, seeking to understand how the field of whiteness studies is taught on college campuses and what Stanford students think about studying race and whiteness. The paper analyzes results from a survey of 200 Stanford students that aimed to collect student reactions to studying race and whiteness, as well as students’ impressions of their own qualification and comfort in discussing race with friends and family. Results indicate a strong desire among the Stanford student body to study race, and provide an argument for Stanford University to establish critical whiteness studies within a framework of anti-racism education. The paper proceeds to analyze eighteen syllabi for classes on whiteness, concluding that while there are many ways to teach about whiteness, there is a distinct and common approach which uses high-level concepts like race as a social construction with intersectional implications and a universalized understanding of whiteness to promote the visibility of whiteness to students in the class. There remain incredible tensions around analyzing racism without centering or privileging whiteness. However, taken together, Stanford student’s endorsement of race and whiteness studies and the sample syllabi’s formal structure for teaching about anti-racist critical whiteness provide a case for Stanford University to implement such a curriculum.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 31, 2017 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Suminski, Micaela |
|---|---|
| Advisor | Martínez, Ramón |
Subjects
| Subject | critical whiteness studies |
|---|---|
| Subject | racism |
| Subject | anti-racism |
| Subject | whiteness |
| Subject | white |
| Subject | black |
| Subject | students |
| Subject | students of color |
| Subject | critical race theory |
| Subject | education |
| Subject | college studies |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Micaela Suminski. (2017). "A Class on Whiteness?" Investigating the Need for Anti-Racist Critical Whiteness Studies at the University Level. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/tz845bh5820
Collection
Undergraduate Honors Theses, Graduate School of Education
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- Contact
- msuminsk@stanford.edu
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