The B.A. program in critical race and ethnic studies (CRES) offers an interdisciplinary curriculum that enables majors to study the history of race and racialization both in the United States and across the globe and to learn how structures of race and racism have changed over time. By approaching race as a major ideological framework through which practices of power and domination as well as struggles for liberation and self-determination have been articulated and enacted throughout modern history and in the contemporary moment, our majors develop a deep understanding of how race and other modalities of power have informed the imagination and trajectory of social transformation and justice in the past and the present. The study of race in CRES yields critical insights into the social, political, cultural, and economic processes that have defined and shaped the modern era—colonialism, slavery, conquest, displacement, genocide, warfare, migration, creolization, criminalization, imprisonment, disenfranchisement, globalization, racial profiling, and post-9/11 security state policies. CRES engages with queer and feminist critique, decolonial thought, and analysis of labor in challenging asymmetrical and exploitative power relations, not only illuminating how race, racism, and racialization are socially reproduced in societies structured by dominance, but also fostering emergent and contestatory forms of knowledge and praxis. A commitment to structural transformation is grounded in intersectional approaches to difference (race, class, gender, sexuality, and caste) and defines the work we do.

The CRES major allows students flexibility at the upper-division level to design an interdisciplinary course of study that enables a general overview of areas of interest, while selecting electives from multiple areas of specific research and career interests. Alternatively, they can engage deeply with a key area of focus, taking a number of courses in a particular area in order to develop expertise in it. For example, they may wish to focus on a social group (e.g., members of the African diaspora), on a discipline (e.g., history), on a social phenomenon (e.g., social movements), or on a methodological or theoretical orientation (e.g., theories of race, gender, and sexuality).

Through immersion in a program of study that is multidisciplinary, comparative, and transnational in scope, CRES majors develop a critical perspective on race, racial relations, and racial justice in the United States and beyond. CRES also helps students develop skills in critical thinking, comparative analysis, the application of social theory, research, communication, and writing so that they can act effectively in an ever-changing, complex, and culturally diverse world. A student with a bachelor’s degree in CRES will be well prepared for employment and continuing educational opportunities in the humanities, social sciences, law, medicine/public health, education, and international affairs and strongly positioned to pursue careers in the private, public, and non-profit sectors.

Kết quả học tập của chương trình

Students who complete the CRES major should emerge with the following skills, competencies, and knowledge:

Critical Frameworks

✔ Demonstrate deep knowledge of historical, contemporary, and intersectional perspectives on race and ethnicity.

✔ Demonstrate familiarity with different disciplinary methods applied to race and ethnicity.

✔ Demonstrate a critical perspective on institutional power and knowledge.

Truyền thông

✔ Demonstrate ability to account for other people’s arguments, to formulate one’s own arguments, and to locate both arguments in the larger context of the field.

✔ Demonstrate ability to formulate an argument in alternative media, such as speech, audiovisual, digital, and other forms of non-written communication.

✔ Demonstrate writing effectively in the interdisciplinary field.

Nghiên cứu

✔ Demonstrate ability to design and implement a collaborative research project.

✔ Demonstrate ability to design and implement an independent research project.

Community Collaboration, Engagement, and Activism

✔ Demonstrate an understanding of the issues, ethics, and methods surrounding activist, collaborative, and community-based research projects.

✔ Demonstrate an understanding of collaborative knowledge that effectively integrates theoretical and experiential thinking about social justice.