This blogpost complements two I have already published in the Understanding Race series on questions of methodology in doing research that works critically with and against race as an analytical tool. In The place of race in developing epistemologies and methodologies I work through the issues raised in the slides…
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This is a space for the Understanding Race Masters of Research Unit I run at Western Sydney University. The space will include my reflections on the texts we are reading as well as student blog posts.
“Perhaps it is wrong to speak of it as ‘a concept’ rather than as a group of contradictory forces, facts and tendencies.’ W.E.B. Du Bois, The Concept of Race, 1940: 67 I think this year has got off to a good start on Understanding Race, the Masters course I have…
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As well as adding to Understanding Race, this post responds and adds to two recent conversations I had, one with Khadijah Diskin and Josh Briond on the Return to the Source podcast and the other with Momodou Taal on The Malcolm Effect podcast. In my book Why Race Still Matters,…
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Lecture given to the ICS Key Thinkers and Concepts Series. I have included both the recording of the lecture on Zoom (which is in two parts) and the text and slides below that. The text and accompanying slides of the lecture follow: Universities are built on sovereign Aboriginal lands. Western…
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I was waiting for a sandwich on Tuesday afternoon and idling on Twitter when I read Falguni Sheth‘s tweet announcing that Distinguished Professor Charles Wade Mills had died. I expleted loudly in shock and had to apologise to the person working behind the counter! Charles W. Mills’ work has become…
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This week we looked at how race and gender are co-constitutive constructs, specifically focusing on the centrality of reproduction in racialisation under conditions of slavery, the different relationships to work of Black, Indigenous and migrant women as opposed to bourgeois white women, and the colonial context as that which enforces…
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Today we had a good discussion about Stuart Hall’s 1997 lecture, ‘Race, the Floating Signifier’ and the accompanying text reproduced in The Fateful Triangle, ‘Race, the Sliding Signifier’. We built on work done over the previous two weeks on W.E.B. Du Bois’ essay ‘The Concept of Race’ and Hall’s engagement…
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The work on this course, Understanding Race, is a work in progress. When I began teaching it in 2018 I had the ambition of providing different content each year, or developing a new theme. The first year was a collection of recent books and articles that I was most excited…
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In preparing for this new year of Understanding Race, the Masters of Research class I teach at Western Sydney University, I have been thinking about the call to speak more about race in settler colonial ‘Australia’. As I have written, there is an elision of race at the heart of…
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I was kindly invited by the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University to give a talk on postcolonial and decolonial thought for its Key Thinkers & Concepts series. I have posted in the slides and notes here. 1. I wish to acknowledgement the Darug people, their elders past and…
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In the age of Black Lives Matter, we have become accustomed to hearing concepts like ‘institutional’ and ‘systemic racism’ openly discussed. On one side, there are calls to recognise the extent to which race shapes experience, access and opportunity even in so-called ‘successful multicultural’ societies like Australia. On the other…
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