Race is not biological. It is a social construction. Yet we know that in our contemporary world and in history, this construction has real consequences. From enslavement and colonisation to resistance and revolution, the stories of people of colour are often left untold in accounts of the past. This free course, Historical perspectives on race, will introduce you to ideas and scholarship dealing with the construction of race, and help you to start exploring people’s lived experiences of race through a set of case studies from the late eighteenth century onwards.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
- understand ideas and concepts of what race means in historical perspective
- appreciate the complexity of diverse and lived experiences of people in the past
- use and analyse different types of sources, both primary and secondary
- think about and process information through description, explanation and analysis
- develop basic tools for further research and reading.
First Published: 14/12/2021
Updated: 14/12/2021