It is crucial to scrutinize whiteness when exploring early modern constructions of social difference with students. Students are not often taught to see issues of white privilege and power.

This class investigates and gauges the value of critical theories and methods focused on race, racism, and racial justice. The aim of this course is to engage meaningfully with scholars, cultural productions, and criticism that draw on critical race studies within their artistic and scholarly work.

Rather than try to tell a sociological story about the "violent Black man" myth, we can examine one instance of this racial mythmaking in a widely studied, influential literary forebear: Shakespeare’s Hamlet.