Identity and Discrimination

This course is an exploration into human diversity through a celebration of our distinct identities and differences. It includes attention to the latest developments in the anthropology of race, gender, religion, sexuality, and of differently abled bodies. In particular, the course will consider the ways that people come to craft a particular identity based on their unique biophysical and psycho-social compositions along with the ways that society alternately embraces, rejects, or seeks to modify our expressions of diversity. Through course lectures, readings and small group workshops, students will examine identity formation among minority groups in settler colonial societies, among people who do not conform with hypersexual or heteronormative social expectations, among people with majority as well as minority belief systems, and among people who have special skills and special needs. Students will also interrogate the various processes of exclusion and discrimination that people with obvious differences in appearance, belief and ability experience on a day-to-day basis. The goal of the course is to promote consideration for the diversity of human experience and expression, as well as understandings of the pathways out of suffering that are possible when our collective differences are embraced.