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This multidisciplinary module is a central component of the REPS MA programme. It has been designed to complement and counterpoint but not to duplicate the content of the other core modules, particularly the Topics In Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies module.

Race In Theory deepens and extends student understanding of how race thinking unfolded historically. It traces the emergence and development of races in philosophical, anthropological, geographical, historical and scientific thinking. Race is understood as a variety of political ontology and is analysed critically as a product of racism--as a social and historical rather than a natural phenomenon.

As with the other core components of this MA programme, a multi-disciplinary approach is regarded as an intellectual strength and an asset.

Students will be broadly exposed to theories of the race idea and the racisms that it enabled. They will follow the development of racialised conceptions of humanity, progress, civilisation, national identity, cultural difference and geo-politics. Those formations are tracked through the era of colonies and empires, into the genocidal history of the twentieth century. The emergence of new kinds of scientific racism in the twenty-first century will be considered in detail. They will also encounter the development of theories that oppose racism and racial hierarchy as well as the social movements that took up those battles in the name of solidarity, universality, humanity and democracy.