" In this course we will read essays, novels, memoirs, and graphic texts, and view documentary and experimental films and videos which explore race from the standpoint of the multiracial. Examining the varied work of multiracial authors and filmmakers such as Danzy Senna, Ruth Ozeki, Kip Fulbeck, James McBride and others, we will focus not on how multiracial people are seen or imagined by the dominant culture, but instead on how they represent themselves. How do these authors approach issues of family, community, nation, language and history? What can their work tell us about the complex interconnections between race, gender, class, sexuality, and citizenship? Is there a relationship between their experiences of multiraciality and a willingness to experiment with form and genre? In addressing these and other questions, we will endeavor to think and write more critically and creatively about race as a social category and a lived experience."

The arrival of the railroad in the Southwest in the early 1870s transformed the area's economy and the lives of its residents. Long-time Mexican residents of the area were quickly drawn into the region's expanding wage economy. In this selection from his handwritten memoir from 1937 Elfido Lpez recalled his childhood on his family's modest homestead and his father's decision to move the family to a small railroad town, and a life of wages, in southern Colorado in 1876.

By 1890, 200,000 Chinese immigrants, mostly men, lived in the United States, usually working under harsh and dangerous conditions. Chinese immigrants faced hostility that sometimes spilled over into violence. In 1882 Congress, responding to the demands of white workers, passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which severely restricted immigration by Chinese into the U.S. San Francisco's Chinese community was the largest in the nation in 1890, with 25,833 people. Arnold Genthe's turn-of-the-century photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown provide information about the Chinese community, but his characterizations often convey a distorted and ominous message. Despite its title, this photograph of Ross Alley, taken some time around the Chinese New Year holiday, is significant for depicting the unusual daytime congestion resulting from the seasonal unemployment of many Chinatown workers after the holiday.