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LAS 407 - The Good Life: Caste and its Antidotes 3 Credit Hours
Isabel Wilkerson, in her 2020 book Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, describes “caste” as an embedded infrastructure in human societies and cultures, a fixed ranking of human value that sets a presumed superiority of one group over against a presumed inferiority of other groups. This course will engage Wilkerson’s argument and focus on two of her main examples of caste: antisemitism in Nazi Germany, and racism in the United States. We will also explore Robert P. Jones’s 2023 book The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future, which explores the impacts of the “Doctrine of Discovery” since 1493, focusing on genocide and dispossession in relation to indigenous people in what became the United States. These studies will be placed into conversation with analyses of moral and intellectual virtues in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, as well as several examples of resistance to caste, including Holocaust “rescuers,” abolitionist and antiracist movements, and various efforts to foster education, commemoration, and repair.
Prerequisite(s): Senior standing.
This course will satisfy the core area requirement in social justice and sustainability.
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