ANTHR 4434 - [Ethnoracial Identity in Anthropology, Language, and Law]

(crosslisted) AMST 4434, LSP 4434
(CA-AS, SCD-AS)

Spring. Not offered: 2021-2022. Next offered: 2022-2023. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Co-meets with AMST 6424/ANTHR 6424/LAW 7231/LSP 6424.

V. Santiago-Irizarry.

In this course, we examine the role that law and language, as mutually constitutive mediating systems, occupy in constructing ethnoracial identity in the United States. We will approach law from a critical anthropological perspective, as a signifying and significant sociocultural system, rather than as an objective structure of rational rules and processes, to consider how legal norms, procedures, and discourses inform other processes of sociocultural production and reproduction, thus contributing to the creation and maintenance of differential power relations. We will draw on anthropological, linguistic, and critical race theory as well as ethnographic and legal material to guide and document our analyses.