This course is designed to introduce students to critical approaches to the study of U.S. minority literatures and cultures from the ‘long’ 20th century. We will examine the issues of ‘race’ and ‘space’ centrally in the formation of U.S. racial and ethnic identities. By examining the racialization of space and the spatialization of race, we seek to consider how the writings by U.S. racial and ethnic groups used literature to reflect on, negotiate and sometimes resist multiple forms of de jure and de facto racial segregation. Slavery, Exclusion Acts, Jim Crow Segregation, Japanese Internment, ‘Borderlands,’ suburbia, and the ghetto are some of the racialized spaces that selected course texts explore. The course will provide an analytical foundation for examining literary production in relation to the historical and political contexts that impact the cultural imaginary.