ACLA 2025-- Whiteness: Imploding the Impermeable and Invisible Monolith
This seminar invites papers critically exploring whiteness as an invented political and social identity category. We seek to investigate its emergence from the transatlantic slave trade, its persistence as an entrenched social norm, and its relative stasis compared to evolving terminology for other racial identities.
Central to our inquiry: Why do people who believe themselves to be white still invest in this category? What strategies might facilitate evolution beyond whiteness? As other racial designations have transformed—Black/Negro/Colored to African-American, Hispanic to Latin/x, Indian to Native/Indigenous, Oriental to Asian—we pose the crucial question: What does Post-Whiteness look like?
We encourage submissions examining: