Amherst College Course to Explore ‘History of Race and Gender’ Through Comic Books
“The course is offered by the school’s history and sexuality, women’s and gender studies departments.”
Is this one of those courses you take to get an easy ‘A’ grade? It sure looks that way.
The College Fix reports:
Amherst College course will explore ‘history of race, gender’ through comic books
In fall 2025, Amherst College students can take a course to learn about “critiques of imperialism and racial inequality in U.S. history” by reading comic books.
“What can we learn about gendered and racialized depictions within comic books? As a catalyst to encourage looking at history from different vantage points, we will put comic books in conversation with the history of race and empire in the United States,” the course description states.
Titled “The History of Race, Gender, and Comic Books,” the class will require students to read comic books as “primary sources and products of a particular historical moment.”
“[O]ther times [they] will be reading them as powerful and yet imperfect critiques of imperialism and racial inequality in U.S. history,” the description states.
Beyond comic books, students will survey “a wide range of material including academic texts, traditional primary source documents, and multi-media sources.”
The course is offered by the school’s history and sexuality, women’s and gender studies departments.
However, a University of Chicago history professor criticized the course.
Professor Rachel Brown told The College Fix that this course is “predicated on a particular theoretical frame” which “will constrain what students are allowed and/or encouraged to discover in the texts.”
“Using different kinds of source material is what we do in history,” she said. Sources are meant to be read as “products of their own time, and therefore, as clues.”
“It is a reflexive hermeneutic — letting the sources show you things about their making, as a way of learning about how they reflect or challenge their own time,” Brown said.
Thus, approaches that emphasize “theory” are dangerous as they “presume the lesson to be learned without letting the sources themselves speak.”
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Comments
Comics are so appropriate for these topics since they are so comical to begin with.
“The course is offered by the school’s history and sexuality, women’s and gender studies departments.”
So out with Maus, in with Josie And The Pussycats.
Amherst will have to increase its DEI admits even more to ensure this class is subscribed.
This is juvenile and silly. A smear on the alumnae of 30 years ago that were actually deserving and very accomplished students.
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