ANTHR 6424 - [Ethnoracial Identity in Anthropology, Language, and Law]

(crosslisted) AMST 6424, LAW 7231, LSP 6424

Spring. Next offered 2018-2019. 4 credits. Student option grading.

V. Santiago-Irizarry.

This course examines the role that both law and language, as mutually constitutive mediating systems, occupy in constructing ethnoracial identity in the United States. We approach the law from a critical anthropological perspective, as a signifying and significant sociocultural system rather than as an abstract collection of rules, norms, and procedures, to examine how legal processes and discourses contribute to processes of cultural production and reproduction that contribute to the creation and maintenance of differential power relations. Course material draws on anthropological, linguistic, and critical race theory as well as ethnographic and legal material to guide and document our analyses.