Race: The History of an Idea in America

Thomas F. Gossett is Professor Emeritus of English at Wake Forest University

Out of print for too long, Gossett's Race is now restored to us just in time for today's readers of critical race theory, cultural studies, and African American Studies. A critical race theorist who always historicizes, Gossett traces the intellectual history of race as an American idea that travels both transnationally, through the circuits of racial science and empire, and across disciplines, from 18th and 19th-century anthropology to the study of language and literature. Gossett's material terrain extends from U. S. literary nationalism, to representations of the Indian in the nineteenth century, to World War I and racism, and concludes with a look at anti-racist counter-discourses in science, social movements, and expressive culture. A 1960s American Studies classic for cultural studies at the millennium, Race may just succeed in bringing U. S. cultural studies back to the future.