Ethnic Studies (ETHN)
Description: Introduction to the interdisciplinary study of Indigenous peoples, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinx peoples, and other racial and ethnic groups in the United States.
Description: Examination of issues related to racism and antiracism. Topics include the history of U.S. racial conflict, whiteness, white fragility, white allyship, white abolitionism, and community action.
Description: A chronological and thematic survey of the history of Hip Hop and major debates in Hip-Hop studies. Topics addressed include the elements of Hip-Hop culture, including deejaying, emceeing, sampling, dancing, beatboxing, rapping, graffiti art, fashion, as well as issues of race, politics, gender, sexual orientation, class, commercialism, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and authenticity.
Description: Introductory survey of the intersections between race, gender, and the law in U.S. history. Includes a review of colonial legal regimes regarding empire, slavery, and liberty; key concepts in American law such as federal Indian law and tribal sovereignty; gendered and racialized restrictions on citizenship and civil rights; tensions between state and federal authority; and historic campaigns for the expansion and restriction of individual liberties.
Description: Broad interpretative survey of the major features that have shaped modern African life.
Description: Representations of Native Americans in popular culture and what they mean for understanding Native experiences and North American history more generally. How Native people portray themselves, cultural misappropriation, sports mascots, gender, Indigenous hip hop, transnational representations, and political activism.
Description: A panoramic analysis, from the pre-Columbian civilizations to the 21st century, focusing on the history of power and culture in order to understand Latin America today.
Prerequisites: Good standing in the University Honors Program or by invitation.
Description: Topic varies.
Description: Topics vary.
Description: Origins, nature, scope, and relevance of research, theory, and social, political, and cultural institutions in African American Studies.
This course is a prerequisite for: ETHN 446
Description: Origins, traditions, culture, spirituality and current issues of North America's indigenous populations. Diversity of tribal experiences and issues relevant for Native Nations both present and past.
Description: Origins, traditions, culture, and current issues of Latinx populations in the United States.
Description: Introduction to the geography, history, society, economy, politics, and arts of Africa. Explores connections between the United States and Africa.
Description: An interdisciplinary introduction to the history and culture of Asian American people living in the United States.
Description: Survey of Mexican history from the Spanish Conquest through the early 2000s. Emphasis on the ethnic diversity of the nation and its political, economic, and social problems related to its historical development.
Description: Introduction to ethnology and its subfields. Standard topics, problems, and theories considered in ethnology, social anthropology, culture and personality, and applied anthropology.
Description: Overview of sociological theories and research on the experiences of different racial, religious, and ethnic groups. Concepts of race and ethnicity, including their social construction. Historical and contemporary racial and ethnic relations and patterns of inequality. Intersections of race, social institutions, and social policies.
Description: Study of the religious history of Africans and African Americans from the seventeenth to the early twenty-first centuries through the motif of movement-literal, metaphorical, and spiritual. Main topics include the influence of African religious beliefs and practices on the creation of new diasporic African-American religious traditions, "slave religion," the formation of independent black churches, African-American Islamic traditions, social protest movements, religion in African-American literature, black womanist movements, and the rise of a "black, Christian Presidency".
Description: History of people from across the world who migrated to the United States. Surveys major themes and issues about immigration and migration since the nation's founding. Emphasizes social, cultural, economic, and political histories related to nationality, ethnicity, citizenship, borders, and the law.
Description: Ancient civilizations of Mexico and Central America including the Ancient Maya, Aztecs, and Toltecs. Anthropological theories and methods dealing with archaeological data about urbanism, architecture, art, human-environment interaction, etc. in ancient Mesoamerica.
Description: Role of the Blacks in the American political system, with emphasis on strategies used to gain political power and influence decision makers; problems faced in the southern and urban political settings.
Description: History of Native peoples of North America, focusing on peoples of the region that became the United States. Surveys major themes and issues in Native American history from origins to the present day. Includes tribal cultures and politics; responses to and interactions with Europeans and Euroamericans; land loss and the degradation of Native Americans' natural resource bases; "pan-Indian" movements; cultural persistence and revitalization; and tribal economies in the twentieth century.
Description: Representative African American works written since 1865, of various genres, studied in their social and historical contexts.
Description: Representative literary works by African writers, mainly in the English language, but with a sampling of works translated from other languages, from the twentieth century, and presented in their social, historical and social contexts.
Description: Samples film representations of people across lines of ethnicity. Topics include identities and inter/intra-relations of power and the interrogation of the socio-cultural, historical, and political dynamics at work within films at the time of production.
Description: Representative early African American works of various genres, studied in their social and historical contexts, from the oral tradition to the Civil War.
Description: Introduction to Asian American literature and relevant historical and cultural background.
Description: Introduction to literature by Native Americans covering early and recent periods.
Description: African American history from African origins to 1877. The slave trade. The development of slavery and slave culture. The experience of free black people in both the North and South. The role of black people in the Revolution and the Civil War. Emancipation and Reconstruction and the Compromise of 1877.
Description: African American history from the end of the Reconstruction period through the present. Social, cultural, economic and political history, the Jim Crow era in the South, African American experience in the urban North and West, the Civil Rights Movement, and the post-Civil Rights era.
Description: Survey of Spanish and Portuguese America that stresses the European background, indigenous peoples, colonial institutions, church, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and the struggle for independence. Focus on the history of power and culture in order to understand colonial Latin America. Pre-1800 content.
Description: Survey of the trajectory of the Latin American nation since independence that stresses political, economic, and social problems. Focus on history of power and culture in order to understand Latin America today.
Description: Constitutional and political development of selected Latin American countries; contemporary problems and institutions. Latin America in world affairs with special reference to the inter-American relations and the United States.
Description: Critical comparative examination of colonization and decolonization and its impact on modern day globalization.
Description: Beginning with a description of African societies in the nineteenth century, focus is upon African responses to European contact and control, the nature of the colonial systems, and the emergence of new independent states in the twentieth century. Using historical and literary sources, stresses Africa's cultural and social history as well as its political and economic development. Special study units given on the Portuguese territories, Rhodesia, and South Africa.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Non-classroom experience related to Ethnic Studies.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Independent research or readings under direction by a faculty member.
Prerequisites: PSYC 181 or permission.
Description: Examines psychological theory and research on the topic of immigration. Includes the impact of immigration on individual development (e.g., socialization, identity formation, acculturation) and family functioning (e.g., intergenerational relations, gender roles).
Description: Introduction to the theories and concepts of intercultural and intergroup communication. Communicative processes associated with social comparison, prejudice and discrimination, and social conflict in various relational and professional contexts.
Description: Examination of Latin American literature and culture with a focus on the issue of modernity and modernization, including topics such as nation-building, development and underdevelopment, dictatorships and revolutions, and racial and cultural identity, among others.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing.
Description: Introduction to the historical, sociological, and philosophical foundations of multicultural education. Examines the increasing cultural diversity of the United States and introduces multicultural education as a concept. Explores awareness and attitudes toward diversity, cultural knowledge, multicultural instructional practices, and curricular resources along with diversity issues impacting PK-12 schooling. Models and reinforces effective teaching and learning strategies while developing reflective teachers for diverse populations.
Description: Immigration as a multifaceted sociopolitical phenomenon. The history of different waves of immigration to the United States. Emphasis on the diversity within every immigrant group, as well as differences and similarities regarding their acculturation process. Public attitudes towards immigration in historical perspective. The American political system's capacity to incorporate newcomers into civic life.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing
Description: Analysis of fundamental debates and dilemmas over the attainment and distribution of rights and obligations in American legal history from colonial times to the present.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing
Description: Analysis of major events and trends in the history of the American West, including: competing claims to rights and resources; debates over development; overlapping federal, state, and tribal legal jurisdictions; racial/ethnic and gendered interactions; and/or historical roots of contemporary Western concerns.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing
Description: In-depth study of the history and culture of Native Americans of the Great Plains from earliest times through the twentieth century, stressing the history of migration, religion, diplomacy, politics, and society. All Indian nations of the Great Plains considered.
Prerequisites: 3hrs FILM or 3hrs ETHN
May be repeated once for credit with a different topic and different instructor.
Description: Construction of ethnic identities in film and TV and the impact of such images on American culture.
Description: Representative works by Black women, composed in various genres, studied in their social and historical contexts. May not be offered every year.
Description: History and multi-generic variety of Caribbean literature written in English.
Description: Introduction to literature by and about Mexican-Americans in its cultural and historical context.
Description: Representative writings by Native American women in their social and historical contexts.
Description: An analysis of a variety of works authored by Cuban-Americans in their historical, cultural, and literary contexts.
Description: Introduction to the ethnography of a specific region of the world, outlining the history and current lifeways of various peoples of the of the region. Regional areas of focus could include: Africa, East Asia, the US, Middle East and North Africa, as well as Indigenous peoples of Latin America, Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains, Indigenous peoples of North America.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing
Description: Surveys Black and/or African-American women's history from the 15th to the late 20th century. The transatlantic slave trade, "New World" experiences, slavery and resistance, sexuality, cultural persistence and evolution, racial strife, the struggle for civil rights, and black womanist and feminist theories.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing
Description: Survey of Mexican-Americans in the United States emphasizing the Spanish-Mexican borderlands frontier, Mexican-American culture, the Anglo-American conquest, and the cultural conflict and fusion since the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.
Description: History of the indigenous women of North America. Gender roles and kinship organization, women's work and economic activities, political and diplomatic roles, and everyday lives and relationships. Analysis of change over time and the effects of colonization and dominant society's imposition of patriarchy. Famous indigenous women such as: Pocahontas, Sacagewea, Nancy Ward, and Winona LaDuke. Contemporary issues.
Description: Introduces theories, concepts, and practices of Indigenous Communication from interdisciplinary perspectives. Emphasis on using Indigenous-centered frameworks to interrogate various phenomena relevant to the lives and realities of Indigenous peoples in North America.
Prerequisites: Junior standing
Description: Analysis of the role of the Latin American nations in world affairs, emphasizing intellectual, economic, and diplomatic relations with the United States and Europe. Understanding of the position and problems of Latin America in the present world.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing
Description: History of Brazil from 1500 to the present, emphasizing political institutions, economic cycles, social structure, and religious and cultural patterns.
Description: Uses knowledge, theories, methods, and historical perspectives appropriate to the social sciences to understand the causes of conflict and development in Africa. Pays attention to the diversity of conflict and development-related experiences on the continent.
Description: Overview of the major physical and human landscapes in Africa. Prominent past and current events will be placed into a spatial context in an attempt to develop insight into the interrelationships that exist among people, cultures, countries, economies, and the environment, not only within Africa, but between Africa and the rest of the world.
Description: Topics vary.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Independent research leading to a thesis.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Independent research leading to a thesis.
Prerequisites: Junior standing; ETHN major or minor.
Description: Integration, synthesis, and exposure to current research and scholarship within the discipline of Ethnic Studies.
Taught in English. Students should have taken at least one 300 level course in Ethnic Studies or in any of the Modern Languages.
Description: Research of major works of Latin American fiction and poetry translated into English. Translation will be also a topic of study.
Prerequisites: PSYC 350.
Description: Major terms and issues in psychology that pertain to race and racism in the United States. General principles of the psychology of racism that are universal. Psychology of the major racial minority groups in the United States examined through their unique cultures, histories, traditions, and collective identities. Research methods for the psychology of racism reviewed as a basis for interpreting research results.
Description: Engages the global development of race from a rhetorical and communicative perspective in order to critically understand the role of race in public life today.
Description: Works of writers with connections to one or more American ethnic communities, seen in their historical, intellectual, and cultural context. Survey of ethnic literature.
Prerequisites: Junior standing
Description: The study of a particular topic in African American poetry, fiction, and/or non-fiction prose.
Prerequisites: Junior standing
Description: Topics in African poetry, fiction, and/or non-fiction prose.
Prerequisites: Junior standing
Description: Topics in Native American poetry, fiction, and/or non-fiction prose. Critical theory and cultural criticism.
Prerequisites: ETHN 200.
Description: Mass or popular black movements. Human rights and their political, cultural, and intellectual impact, historical continuity, and organization.
Prerequisites: 9 hours of SOCI, or Senior standing.
Description: Contribution of social inequality to health outcomes; Intersection of individual and social factors through which racial, economic, and gender differences in health emerge.
Description: Explores how the contemporary women's movement has emerged within Africa and its relationship to social change.
Prerequisites: Junior standing.
Description: Survey and analysis of the origins, contours, activities, ideas, movement centers, personalities, and legacies of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the U.S. A. from the 1950's through the 1970's. The roles of the African-American masses, college and high school students, and women. The points of conflict and cooperation between African-American and mainstream American society.
Description: Reading and discussion of the Spanish-American short story from its origins. Works of the twentieth century by authors such as Horacio Quiroga, Jorge Luis Borges, Maria Luisa Bombal, Juan Rulfo, Julio Cortazar, Rosario Castellanos, and Luisa Valenzuela.
Description: Includes Indian politics, ideologies about Latin American indigenous peoples, global issues, and inter-ethnic relationships in Latin America.
Prerequisites: Junior standing.
Description: Issues in Native American History. Topics may include: Native Americans and the environment; Native Americans in the 19th or 20th century; Native Americans and federal Indian policy; Native Americans and gender; and Native Americans of regions other than the Great Plains.
Description: Examination of a variety of feminist Latin American texts including poetry, fiction, history, philosophy and political manifestos from a cultural and literary studies perspective. Consideration of pop culture and visual artists.
Prerequisites: Junior standing
Description: Experience of femininity and masculinity compared according to time and place, revealing the intimate connections with nation, modernity, race, and ethnicity.
Prerequisites: Junior standing
Description: The experience of race and ethnicity in the 20th and 21st centuries compared according to time and place, revealing the intimate connections with nation and modernity.
Prerequisites: Junior standing.
Description: Indigenous peoples worldwide and current issues concerning them. Tribal sovereignty, territorial conflicts, globalization, ecosystem destruction, human rights, and the World Indigenous Movement.
Prerequisites: Junior standing and permission.
Description: An interdisciplinary analysis of topical issues in Latin American Studies.
Prerequisites: 9 hours of SOCI, or Senior standing.
Description: Systematic examination of racial, ethnic, and other minority groups. History and present status of such groups, the origins of prejudice and discrimination, and the application of social science knowledge toward the elimination of minority group problems.
Prerequisites: ETHN 100
prerequisite provides an overview of the U.S. race/ethnic groups.
Description: Exploration of race and law issues and how race has been influenced by and influenced the law in the United States. Topics include the origins and content of race in the law, the major legal issues for various ethnic groups, and substantive areas of law where racial legal outcomes have occurred, race bias, stereotypes and essentialism.
Prerequisites: Junior standing.
Description: Survey of the history of South Africa from the Stone Age to the evolution of the political, economic, legal and social framework of apartheid, and the recent efforts to achieve political accommodation.
Prerequisites: Junior or Senior Standing
Description: Examination of the history of education in the United States from the colonial era to the present. Focus on shifts in formal educational policy and the influence of those policies on diverse demographic groups. Themes include the emergence of a public and private school systems, the spread of segregated schools, the development of curricular standards, the history of teachers, the push for desegregation, as well as debates over students' rights, language, affirmative action, and the public/private nature of charter schools, especially in terms of social justice.
Description: Topics vary.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Non-classroom experience related to Ethnic Studies.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Independent research or reading under direction by a faculty member.