HIST283-25S2 (C) Semester Two 2025

Ethnicity, Racism and Genocide

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 14 July 2025
End Date: Sunday, 9 November 2025
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 27 July 2025
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 28 September 2025

Description

This course provides a critical introduction to the historical and anthropological study of ethnicity, racism, genocide and migration.

This course aims to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about ethnicity, racism and genocide, exploring ways that we might understand, explain and compare these phenomena in the past and in the contemporary world.  

Our focus in all three sections of the course is on:
1. Ways we might investigate concrete issues such as racism, genocide, ethnic violence, cultural survival, ethnic incorporation, nationalism, indigeneity, migration, assimilation, diaspora and transnationalism.

2. The kinds of questions that confront those of us engaged in the anthropological study of ethnicity, racism, and genocide. Does ethnicity matter? If so, when has it become important? How had it worked in everyday life? What is the relationship between ethnicity and other kinds of social identification such as class, religion, gender and locality? What is the connection between ethnicity and culture in specific contexts? Why ethnicity? What do we mean when we use terms like ‘racism’ and ‘genocide’?

Learning Outcomes

  • This course will enable each participant to:  

  • Consider the value of ethnicity and indigeneity as conceptual tools for the study of everyday life in the past and in the contemporary world.
  • Critically evaluate different anthropological approaches to ethnicity, racism, genocide, ethnic violence and migration.
  • Consider processes of colonisation and globalisation and their role in shaping ethnic relations locally and internationally.
  • Critically reflect on the historical realities of indigenous societies in comparative perspective  
  • Complete a research essay that applies frameworks developed in the course to the study of ethnic relations in a specific context.
  • Critically reflect on the nature of knowledge and norms, including indigenous models, in a personal learning journal.
  • Contribute effectively in group and co-operative work.

      • University Graduate Attributes

      This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attributes specified below:

      Critically competent in a core academic discipline of their award

      Students know and can critically evaluate and, where applicable, apply this knowledge to topics/issues within their majoring subject.

      Employable, innovative and enterprising

      Students will develop key skills and attributes sought by employers that can be used in a range of applications.

      Globally aware

      Students will comprehend the influence of global conditions on their discipline and will be competent in engaging with global and multi-cultural contexts.

Prerequisites

Any 15 points at 100 level in HIST, ANTH, MAOR, PACS, or
SOCI, or
CLAS120, or
any 60 points at 100 level from the Schedule V of the BA.

Restrictions

ANTH223, MAOR230, PACS204, SOCI223

Equivalent Courses

ANTH223, MAOR230, PACS204

Course Coordinator

Lyndon Fraser

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage 
Research Essay 40%
Learning Journal 40%
Structured Controversy Exercise 20%


Please check the course LEARN page for further details and updates.

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $894.00

International fee $4,100.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Humanities .

All HIST283 Occurrences

  • HIST283-25S2 (C) Semester Two 2025
Previous year