HST 362 - Black Britain: Race and Empire

Course Units:

(TBD: Staff) A future king of Great Britain is asked if the royal family is racist. Black Lives Matter activists in Bristol pull down the statue of the notorious slave trader Edward Colston and dump it into the very harbor from which his ships offloaded slaves. The BBC refuses to repeat an episode of the iconic 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers for being racially insensitive … to Germans - no one mentions that a British West Indian doctor is labelled with the n-word. Netflix strikes gold with the multicultural cast and romping sexuality of Bridgerton, turning the staid “white” Regency period on its head. The Tories launch a “war on woke” for votes, historical truth be damned. Just how can people figure out what it means to be a citizen of the United Kingdom today? Through an analysis of history, literature, film, and media this course reveals the unknown, lost, and censored history of race and empire that defines the United Kingdom’s past. It is a burden of history carried by every U.K. citizen, but in dramatically unequal and inequitable ways. We will learn how historical ignorance and dishonesty fuel racism in the U.K. today - as they do in so many countries. In this course, students play an active role in developing and selecting the content through which we explore these pressing questions of social justice. Prerequisite(s): Any 100-level or 200-level history course or permission of the instructor. CC: LCC