This class explores Whiteness as a cultural and media phenomenon, as well as an emerging academic discipline. In the course, students examine and grow to understand: the media's construction of race--and of Whiteness as a powerful aspect of that construction; Whiteness as rhetoric, property, and privilege; the construction and representation of "liminal" Whites (those on the borders of racial and socioeconomic identities); and such phenomena as passing, appropriation, fragility and guilt. Whiteness in mass media and politics are emphasized.