| Topic | Name | Description |
| origins of race, U.S. history, world history | The Historical Origins and Development of Racism | ARTICLE BY GEORGE FREDRICKSON - a brief overview of the evolution of the race concept in the West. |
| origins of race, slavery, racism, classification, U.S.history | Presentation by Historian Barbara J. Fields | EDITED TRANSCRIPT - how race was created to justify American slavery and how race, or racism, is inherently non-neutral. |
| origins of race, slavery | Africans, Slavery and Race | SUMMARY BY JOHN CHENG - Was it inevitable that Africans would be imported to the Americas to become slaves? Did European views about racial inferiority contribute to the fact of New World African slavery? |
| origins of race, slavery | Interview with James O. Horton,historian | EDITED TRANSCRIPT - the fluidity of racial identities in early colonial America, the long history of slavery not based on race, how the rationalization of slavery continues to affect us today. |
| racial classification, law, whiteness, early racialidentity, U.S. history | Interview with Robin D.G. Kelley, historian | EDITED TRANSCRIPT - how did early American peoples see themselves? how is race socially constructed? how is racism more than just individual prejudice and fear? |
| origins of race, anthropology, slavery, early ideas | Interview with Audrey Smedley, anthropologist | EDITED TRANSCRIPT - how is race a modern concept? why were Africans enslaved? What role did 19th century ethnologists and race scientists play in shaping our understanding of race? |
| Native American and American Indian, U.S. history, Manifest Destiny, Indian policy, early English-indian encounters | Interview with Theda Perdue, historian | EDITED TRANSCRIPT - how have ideas of race changed and affected the treatment of Native Americans and the self-identity of tribes like the Cherokee - from the early encounter with British colonists to today? |
| freedom, slavery, origins of race, early colonial history | Interview with Ira Berlin, historian | EDITED TRANSCRIPT - what was early colonial Virginia like? how are race and freedom tied together? what is the tension in American history with regard to race? |
| origins of race, slavery | The Origin of the Idea of Race | ARTICLE BY AUDREY SMEDLEY - how race was institutionalized in the 19th century as a worldview, a set of cultural attitudes and assumptions about human group differences. |
| Native American and American Indian, U.S. history, early English-indian encounters | Interview with Karen Ordahl Kupperman, historian | EDITED TRANSCRIPT - how did the English and Native peoples of America view themselves and each other at the time of their first encounter? Why did the English colonize North America? |
