Prerequisites: RCC*. Through a focus on standard legal materials (cases, statutes and so on), selected archival materials and scholarly writings, this seminar seeks to examine the ways in which the law has both (a) reflected societal attitudes about race and (b) generated racial identities for society. In examining these two mutually constitutive poles, we will attempt to arrive at an understanding of the relationship between law and identity. The course will emphasize the historical construction of racialized identities—those of European-Americans, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, native Americans and others—by and within the law in such diverse contexts as slavery, immigration, the settlement of the United States and civil rights. Satisfies perspective elective requirement.