“Whiteness” Scholars to Meet at Major Conference at Berkeley

Leading scholars in the new field of"whiteness” studies are meeting at the University of California at Berkeley next weekend.

According to its organizers,"The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness” is the first national conference to bring together scholars from several disciplines to discuss the topic.

The field has developed over the past decade as academics have sought to understand the formation of white identity and how whiteness has perpetuated social inequalities. These scholars have argued that white identity has been ignored in questions of race.

Among those expected to attend are Shelley Fisher Fishkin, of the University of Texas at Austin; Eric Lott, of the University of Virginia; Walter Benn Michaels, of the Johns Hopkins University; Fred Pfeil, of Trinity College (Conn.); and David Roediger, of the University of Missouri.

Topics of papers to be presented at the conference include an ethnography of whites in three communities in Detroit; the shift in the meaning of whiteness in prison;"race traitors”; and the relationship of whiteness and Jewishness in the life and work of the stage performer Mickey Katz.