504.01 Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory (CRT), a scholarly movement that began in the 1980s, challenges both the substance and style of conventional legal scholarship. Substantively, critical race scholars (“race crits”) reject formal equality, individual rights, and color-blind approaches to solving legal problems. Stylistically, race crits often employ new methodologies for legal scholarship, including storytelling and narrative. This course introduces CRT’s core principles and explores its possibilities and limitations. With a heavy focus on writings that shaped the movement, the course will examine the following concepts and theories: storytelling, interest convergence theory, the social construction of race, the black-white paradigm, the myth of the model minority, intersectionality, essentialism, working identity, covering, whiteness and white privilege, colorblindness, microaggressions, and implicit bias. Students will apply these theories and frameworks to cases and topics dealing with, among other things, first amendment freedoms, affirmative action, employment discrimination, and criminal disparities and inequities. The course affords students an opportunity to think about the ways in which racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism are inextricably interwoven as well as an opportunity to challenge critically our most basic assumptions about race, law, and justice.
Spring 2022
Course Number | Course Credits | Evaluation Method | Instructor | ||
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504.01 |
Course Credits
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Reflective Writing
Research and/or analytical paper(s), 10-15 pages
Oral presentation
Class participation
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Trina Jones, H. Timothy Lovelace, Jr. | ||
Sakai site: https://sakai.duke.edu/portal/site/LAW-504-01-Sp22 | |||||
Email list: LAW-504-01-Sp22@sakai.duke.edu |
Course |
Course
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Degree Requirements |
Course Requirements - JD
Course Requirements - LLM
Course Requirements - Public Interest
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Course Areas of Practice |