What is Ethnic Studies?
Ethnic Studies Program
Professor Andrea Herrera, Director
Ethnic Studies was established in 1995 as an interdisciplinary program leading to a minor. the program promotes curricular and faculty development and sponsors a variety of cultural programming and colloquia. Courses offered through the program focus primarily on the experiences and cultural expressions of the four main ethnic minority communities in the United States: African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos/Hispanics. These experiences and cultural expressions include, but are not limited to, economic, political, legal, historical and cultural dimensions of life in the United States. An important goal of the program is to build on the knowledge grounded in the experiences of racial/ethnic groups that have been marginalized and excluded from full participation in society.
Students may earn a minor degree in Ethnic Studies or include Ethnic Studies as part of a distributed studies degree. The purpose of courses in Ethnic Studies is to synthesize knowledge in terms of ethnic minority perspectives. The Ethnic Studies minor at the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences will, therefore, provide a basis for:
1. examining knowledge from specific U.S. racial/ethnic minority perspectives;
2. examining relationships among racial/ethnic groups and the processes of racial/ethnic formation - and its intersections with class, gender and sexuality - at the personal and collective levels;
3. developing competencies for working with people of different racial/ethnic backgrounds, and fostering an understanding of racial/ethnic diversity;
4. fostering in students critical perspectives regarding Euro-centric, indigenous, and other forms of knowledge constructions.
Ethnic Studies also provides students a forum for exploring the realities of their own experiences and discussing those realities in a systematic, informed civil manner. Courses are designed to facilitate this exploration process in a supportive context and empower students to live their own cultures, and view others' cultures, in a new and positive light.