History 410: The History of Interracial Families in the United States

Course Description

This course will examine the long and rich history of interracial families in the United States. It will address a wide range of interracial sexual and familial relationships, including those between: Hispanic men and indigenous women; Native American women and Euro-American explorers and fur traders; native Americans and African Americans of the colonial period; Native Americans and their Euro-American captives; African Americans and Euro-Americans during slavery; and the proliferation of interracial marriage and adoption in the late twentieth century. We shall be concerned both with how legal and political structures reacted to and tried to shape intimate interracial relationships and how people conducted themselves in them. Particular attention wil be paid to how race, gender, and power have intersected in interracial families.

Required Texts

Edward Ball, Slaves in the Family. Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1988.
Cluadein Chiawei O'Hearn, ed., Half and Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural. Pantheon, 1998.

Evaluation

One five (5) page term paper.
One five (5) page take-hom exam.

About the Instructor:
David Peterson del mar is the author of two books on the history of interpersonal violence and an article on a Native American woman's intermarriages. He is the white parent of an African American child, was the single foster parent of a Latino boy, and is a board member of Oregon Uniting (a group which fosters interracial reconciliation) and the Oregon Council on Multiracial Affairs (a group for interracial people and families). He regularly teaches courses on the history of the U.S. family for Oregon State University (online) and Portland State University.