Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
2013-14 General Catalog
503 Humanities I
(831) 459-2696
http://humanities.ucsc.edu/
Program Description
Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) seeks an understanding of “the public” and “the common good” as centrally constituted by racial and ethnic formations. This understanding requires the study of the dynamic power relations resulting from the cultural and institutional productions of the idea of “race” on a local, national, and global scale. Here, “race” is understood as a major ideological framework through which both practices of power and domination and struggles for liberation and self-determination have been articulated and enacted throughout modern history and in the contemporary moment. The study of “race,” as such, is a rigorous project, one which yields critical insights into the social, political, cultural, and economic processes that have defined and shaped the modern era—colonialism and slavery, conquest and displacement, genocide and warfare, migration and creolization, criminalization, imprisonment, and disenfranchisement, globalization and post-9/11 security state policies such as racial profiling. These phenomena orient our attention to particular academic fields with which CRES is necessarily in dialogue. These fields 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.
UC Santa Cruz faculty have contributed significantly to conversations in critical race and ethnic studies for decades, with nationally renowned faculty in American studies, anthropology, community studies, feminist studies, film and digital media, history, history of art and visual culture, history of consciousness, Latin American and Latino studies, literature, politics, psychology, social documentation, sociology, and the sciences working and teaching in the field. Many courses engaging these studies are sponsored by these departments. In addition, courses have been approved specifically under the CRES rubric.
Revised: 09/01/13
