Race and Gender in the 1990s United States

Popular references to the 1990s are often contradictory: it was somehow an era of prosperity and anxiety, stability and scandal, "colorblindness" and "race riots," and "New Democrats" and the "Republican Revolution." This course seeks to reconcile these apparent inconsistencies by examining the intersections of gender and race in American politics and popular culture. With a historical framework, students will situate this decade within the larger shifts of the late twentieth-century, including political realignment, increasing polarization, and economic dislocation.