Topic Course: Critical Race Theory
one-way Exclusions
Lecture, tutorial, and private study
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Course Description
DEVS 392-001: Critical Race Theory (Winter 2027)
This course critically examines the foundations of the racial capitalist world-system and the enduring legacies of slavery, empire, and black dispossession in relation to contemporary political-economic structures of governance. From the transatlantic slave trade to prisons, detention centres, borders, and migrant worker exploitation, we trace how the plantation persists in shaping who is confined, who profits, and who is made disposable. The course will engage with diverse Pan-African, black feminist, Indigenous, anti-colonial, and Third World perspectives that points towards the moorings of the contemporary manifestations of racial capitalist and carceral systems. Along the way, you’ll think alongside revolutionary archives of literature, poetry, artwork, speeches as well as engage in conversations with community organizers to understand what it means to achieve racial justice. By the end, you won’t just have learned about the origins of racial capitalist world system —I would hope you’ll have begun to see the plantation as an ongoing, death-making force shaping our world and our shared futures.
Learning Outcomes
- Trace the Genealogies of Capitalism: Explain the historical and contemporary links between racism, capitalism, colonialism, and global migration, and analyze how regimes of racial, gendered, and class-based exploitation interlock with and reinforce each other.
- Develop Analytical Frameworks: Demonstrate the ability to apply key theoretical concepts, such as racial capitalism, political economy, and internationalism.
- Engage with Radical Politics of Resistance: Evaluate the relationship between resistance movements—such as abolitionist struggles, Black liberation, anti-colonial and anti-imperial—and global political economy, and assess their potential for reshaping social, political, and governance systems.
- Cultivate Critical Communication Skills: Develop written and oral communication skills to effectively present ideas about racial capitalism, colonial histories, and shared futures.