The B.A. program in critical race and ethnic studies (CRES) offers an interdisciplinary curriculum that enables majors to examine the dynamic power relations resulting from the cultural and institutional productions of the idea of "race" on a local, national, and global scale. Our majors study the history of race and ethnicity both in the United States and across the globe, and they learn how the constructs 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. Our majors also examine historical racial/ethnic ideologies such as multiculturalism, colorblindness, and postracialism as well as contemporary social phenomena such as changing working conditions, new migration patterns, and emergent cultural expressions. Students further explore the ways that race and ethnicity have developed in concert with gender, sexuality, class, indigeneity, citizenship, and other areas of power, privilege, and lived identity, as well as the role they play in access to education, employment, welfare services, and participation in politics, the economy, and the arts.
The academic fields with which CRES is necessarily in dialogue include postcolonial studies, settler colonialism studies, human rights studies, indigenous studies, migration, diaspora and border studies, mixed race studies , legal studies, environmental studies, and science studies. CRES majors draw on methods and concepts from different academic disciplines in order to better understand historical and contemporary social phenomena and problems. The 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 graduate-level study 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.
The CRES major works very well as a double major with numerous fields of study such as anthropology, community studies, creative writing, feminist studies, film and digital media, education, environmental studies, history, history of art and visual culture, legal studies, linguistics, languages, literature, politics, sociology, theater arts, and more.