Critical Social Thought 223 - Neoliberal America

What can Brown do for you? This question captures a central theme of this course: how a word like 'Brown' evolved from a 1970s signifier of antiracist coalition building into a motto of the United Parcel Service (UPS), selling speed, efficiency, and access to networks of the global economy. Using interdisciplinary methods, we will explore the way multicultural imagery, Civil Rights discourse, and state policy have converged in the service of global capitalism. Focusing on fiction (egs. Octavia Butler, Karen Yamashita), film (egs. Crash, Sleep Dealers) and secondary sources, we will examine the impact of neoliberal multiculturalism and how cultural producers amplify and challenge its logics.