Ethnic Studies - graduate program

Ethnic Studies

[ undergraduate program | graduate program | faculty ]

All courses, faculty listings, and curricular and degree requirements described herein are subject to change or deletion without notice.

Courses

For course descriptions not found in the UC San Diego General Catalog 2019–20, please contact the department for more information.

Lower Division

ETHN 1. Introduction to Ethnic Studies: Land and Labor (4)

This course examines key historical events and debates in the field that center around land and labor, including disputes about territory and natural resources, slavery and other forms of unfree labor, labor migration and recruitment, and US and transnational borders. Students may not receive credit for both ETHN 1A and ETHN 1.

ETHN 2. Introduction to Ethnic Studies: Circulations of Difference (4)

Focusing on historical and contemporary migration and the circulation of commodities, knowledge, bodies, and culture, this course looks at how racial formation in the United States and transnationally is shaped and contested by such movements. Students may not receive credit for both ETHN 1B and ETHN 2.

ETHN 3. Introduction to Ethnic Studies: Making Culture (4)

Through examining the historical and contemporary politics of representation in both popular and community-focused media, film, art, music, and literature, this course tracks racial formation through studying the sphere of cultural production, consumption, and contestation. Students may not receive credit for both ETHN 1C and ETHN 3.

ETHN 20. Introduction to Asian American Studies (4)

This course introduces students to key issues in Asian American lives, with emphasis on the global historical context of migration; changing ethnic and racial consciousness; economic, social, and political status; cultural production; and family and gender relations.

ETHN 87. Freshman Seminar (1)

The Freshman Seminar Program is designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting. Freshman Seminars are offered in all campus departments and undergraduate colleges, and topics vary from quarter to quarter. Enrollment is limited to fifteen to twenty students, with preference given to entering freshmen.

ETHN 97. Field Studies in Racial and Ethnic Communities (1–4)

Supervised community fieldwork on topics of importance to racial and ethnic communities in the San Diego County region. Regular individual meetings with faculty sponsor and final project and/or written report are required. Prerequisites: lower-division standing, completion of at least thirty units of undergraduate study at UC San Diego, minimum 3.0 GPA at UC San Diego, consent of instructor, and completed and approved Special Studies form.

ETHN 98. Directed Group Studies (1–4)

Directed group study on a topic or in a field not included in the regular department curriculum by special arrangement with a faculty member. Prerequisites: lower-division standing, completion of at least thirty units of undergraduate study at UC San Diego, minimum 3.0 GPA at UC San Diego, consent of instructor, and completed and approved Special Studies form.

ETHN 99. Independent Study (1–4)

Directed study on a topic or in a field not included in the regular department curriculum by special arrangement with a faculty member. Prerequisites: lower-division standing, completion of at least thirty units of undergraduate study at UC San Diego, minimum 3.0 GPA at UC San Diego, consent of instructor, and completed and approved Special Studies form.

Upper Division

Prerequisites: upper-division standing or consent of instructor.

ETHN 100A. Ethnic Studies: Theoretical Approaches (4)

An advanced survey of key issues, themes, and debates in the field of critical ethnic studies focusing on the connection between race and social structures. Students will use diverse theoretical frameworks to identify and interpret contemporary and historical social problems. Prerequisites: ETHN 1 or ETHN 2 or ETHN 3, ethnic studies majors or minors, or consent of instructor.

ETHN 100B. Interdisciplinary Methodologies (4)

An introduction to interdisciplinary research methodologies in critical ethnic studies. By developing a critical analysis of the politics of knowledge production, students will learn to identify different methodological approaches in the field and to evaluate their use in practical application. Prerequisites: ETHN 100A, ethnic studies major or minor, or consent of instructor.

ETHN 100C. Social Justice Praxis (4)

An intensive capstone experience for ethnic studies majors, this course combines an advanced exploration of praxis-based approaches to social justice with practicum-based independent campus, community, creative, or research projects. Prerequisites: ETHN 100A and ETHN 100B, ethnic studies major or minor, or consent of instructor.

ETHN 100H. Honors Research Design (4)

This discussion-based course will focus on the application of advanced research methods to the design of extensive, independent research-based projects. Prerequisites: ETHN 100A and ETHN 100B. Department approval required.

ETHN 101. Ethnic Images in Film (4)

An upper-division lecture course studying representations of ethnicity in the American cinema. Topics include ethnic images as narrative devices, the social implications of ethnic images, and the role of film in shaping and reflecting societal power relations.

ETHN 102. Science and Technology in Society: Race/Gender/Class (4)

This course examines the role of science and technology in forming popular conceptions of race, gender and class, and vice versa. We also consider how some populations benefit from the results of experimentation while others come to be its subjects.

ETHN 103. Environmental Racism (4)

This course will examine the concept of environmental racism, the empirical evidence of its widespread existence, and the efforts by government, residents, workers, and activists to combat it. We will examine those forces that create environmental injustices in order to understand its causes as well as its consequences. Students are expected to learn and apply several concepts and social scientific theories to the course material.

ETHN 104. Race, Space, and Segregation (4)

Through in-depth studies of housing segregation, urban renewal and displacement, neighborhood race effects, and the location of hazards and amenities, this course examines how space becomes racialized and how race becomes spatialized in the contemporary United States.

ETHN 105. Ethnic Diversity and the City (4)

(Cross-listed with USP 104.) This course will examine the city as a crucible of ethnic identity, exploring both the racial and ethnic dimensions of urban life in the United States from the Civil War to the present.

ETHN 106. Life, Death, and the Human (4)

Using interdisciplinary approaches, this course examines some of the contexts in which the conditions of life and death become sites of political, economic, and cultural significance, and how categories of difference impact access to the protections of “humanity.”

ETHN 107. Fieldwork in Racial and Ethnic Communities (4)

(Cross-listed with USP 130.) This is a research course examining social, economic, and political issues in ethnic and racial communities through a variety of research methods that may include interviews and archival, library, and historical research.

ETHN 108. Race, Culture, and Social Change (4)

(Cross-listed with MUS 151.) Aggrieved groups often generate distinctive forms of cultural expression by turning negative ascription into positive affirmation and by transforming segregation into congregation. This course examines the role of cultural expressions in struggles for social change by these communities inside and outside the United States.

ETHN 109. Race and Social Movements (4)

This course explores collective mobilizations for resources, recognition, and power by members of aggrieved racialized groups, past and present. Emphasis will be placed on the conditions that generate collective movements, the strategies and ideologies that these movements have developed, and on the prospect for collective mobilization for change within aggrieved communities in the present and future.

ETHN 110. Cultural Worldviews of Indigenous America (4)

Places Native Americans/indigenous people’s ways of living, knowing, and understanding the world in relation to settler-immigrant societies in North America. Students gain analytical tools for thinking about world views through themes of cosmology, land, kinship, and identity formation.

ETHN 111. Native American Literature (4)

This course analyzes Native American written and oral traditions. Students will read chronicles and commentaries on published texts, historic speeches, trickster narratives, oratorical and prophetic tribal epics, and will delve into the methodological problems posed by tribal literature in translation.

ETHN 112A. History of Native Americans in the United States I (4)

(Cross-listed with HIUS 108A.) This course examines the history of Native Americans in the United States, with emphasis on the lifeways, mores, warfare, cultural adaptation, and relations with the European colonial powers and the emerging United States until 1870.

ETHN 112B. History of Native Americans in the United States II (4)

(Cross-listed with HIUS 108B.) This course examines the history of Native Americans in the United States, with emphasis on the lifeways, mores, warfare, cultural adaptation, and relations with the United States from 1870 to the present.

ETHN 113. Decolonizing Education (4)

This course considers decolonial theories of education in relation to classroom pedagogy, focusing on US urban high schools.

ETHN 114A. Representing Native America (4)

History and theory: Introduction to the history and theory of museum representation of American Indians in order to explore its relation to colonialism and decolonization. Study of Plains Indian drawings from 1860 to 1890 will allow the class to create new approaches to designing a museum exhibition.

ETHN 114B. Representing Native America—Exhibition Design (4)

The class will work in teams to design all aspects of an actual museum exhibition of Plains Indian drawings from 1860 to 1890, turning theory into practice. In some quarters, the exhibition will be installed in a San Diego museum directly after completion of the course. Prerequisites: ETHN 114A.

ETHN 115. Monsters, Orphans, and Robots (4)

This course considers dark agencies, queer threats, and how they seep through cracks in containers meant to disable them. This class will be writing intensive with an artistic production component. Recommended: ETHN 100 is recommended prior to enrollment in this course.

ETHN 116. The United States-Mexico Border in Comparative Perspective (4)

This course critically explores the US-Mexico frontier and the social-cultural issues on both sides of the international demarcation. Social-historical and political-economic patterns illuminate border life, ethnic identity, social diversity, and cultural expression. Border ethnography is complemented by film and music.

ETHN 117. Organic Social Movements (4)

Examination of local responses to global change and social disruption through the examination of organic movements in indigenous societies. In-depth analysis of the Kuna Indians of San Blas, Panama; Maya-Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico; and Micronesians of the western Pacific.

ETHN 118. Contemporary Immigration Issues (4)

This course examines the diversity of today’s immigrants—their social origins and contexts of exit and their adaptation experiences and contexts of incorporation.

ETHN 119. Race in the Americas (4)

This course explores the genesis, evolution, and contradictions of racially heterogeneous societies in the Americas, from European conquest to the present. Topics: the social history of Native Americans, blacks, and Asians, their interactions with European settlers, and racial, sexual, and class divisions.

ETHN 120. Race and Performance: The Politics of Popular Culture (4)

This course explores how racial categories and ideologies have been constructed through performance and displays of the body in the United States and other sites. Racialized performances, whether self-displays or coerced displays, such as world’s fairs, museums, minstrelsy, film, ethnography, and tourist performances are considered.

ETHN 120D. Race and Oral History in San Diego (4)

(Cross-listed with HIUS 120D.) This course examines the history of racial and ethnic communities in San Diego. Drawing from historical research and interdisciplinary scholarship, we will explore how race impacted the history and development of San Diego and how “ordinary” folk made sense of their racial identity and experiences. Toward these ends, students will conduct oral history and community-based research, develop public and digital humanities skills, and preserve a collection of oral histories for future scholarship. Concurrent enrollment in an Academic Internship Program course strongly recommended. Students may not receive credit for HIUS 120D and ETHN 120D.

ETHN 121. Contemporary Asian American History (4)

The course will study changes in Asian American communities as a result of renewed immigration since 1965; the influx of refugees from Vietnam, Kampuchea, and Laos; the impact of contemporary social movements on Asian Americans’ current economic, social, and political status.

ETHN 122. Asian American Culture and Identity (4)

A survey of Asian American cultural expressions in literature, art, and music to understand the social experiences that helped forge Asian American identity. Topics: culture conflict, media portrayals, assimilation pressures, the model minority myth, and interethnic and class relations.

ETHN 123. Asian American Politics (4)

This course will examine the development of Asian American politics by studying the historical and contemporary factors, such as political and economic exclusion, that have contributed to the importance and complexity of ethnicity as a mobilizing force in politics.

ETHN 124. Asian American Literature (4)

(Cross-listed with LTEN 181.) Selected topics in the literature by men and women of Asian descent who live and write in the United States. May be repeated for credit when topics vary.

ETHN 125. Asian American History (4)

(Cross-listed with HIUS 124.) Explore how Asian Americans were involved in the political, economic and cultural formation of United States society. Topics include migration; labor systems; gender, sexuality and social organization; racial ideologies and anti-Asian movements; and nationalism and debates over citizenship.

ETHN 126. Comparative Filipino and Vietnamese American Identities and Communities (4)

This course compares the historical and contemporary social, political, and economic experiences of Filipino and Vietnamese Americans, paying particular attention to the impact of US wars in the Philippines and in Vietnam on their respective lives.

ETHN 127. Sexuality and Nation (4)

(Cross-listed with CGS 112.) This course explores the nexus of sex, race, ethnicity, gender, and nation and considers their influence on identity, sexuality, migration, movement, and borders and other social, cultural, and political issues that these constructs affect.

ETHN 128. Hip-Hop: The Politics of Culture (4)

(Cross-listed with MUS 152.) Examination of hip-hop’s technology, lyrics, and dance and its influences in graffiti, film, music video, fiction, advertising, gender, corporate investment, government, and censorship with a critical focus on race, gender, and popular culture and the politics of creative expression.

ETHN 129. Asian and Latina Immigrant Workers in the Global Economy (4)

(Cross-listed with USP 135.) This course will explore the social, political, and economic implications of global economic restructuring, immigration policies, and welfare reform on Asian and Latina immigrant women in the United States. We will critically examine these larger social forces from the perspectives of Latina and Asian immigrant women workers, incorporating theories of race, class, and gender to provide a careful reading of the experiences of immigrant women on the global assembly line.

ETHN 130. Social and Economic History of the Southwest I (4)

(Cross-listed with HIUS 158.) This course examines the history of the Spanish and Mexican Borderlands (what became the US Southwest) from roughly 1400 to the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, focusing specifically on the area’s social, cultural, and political development.

ETHN 131. Social and Economic History of the Southwest II (4)

(Cross-listed with HIUS 159.) This course examines the history of the American Southwest from the Mexican-American War in 1846–48 to the present, focusing on immigration, racial and ethnic conflict, and the growth of Chicano national identity.

ETHN 132. Chicano Dramatic Literature (4)

(Cross-listed with TDHT 110.) Focusing on the contemporary evolution of Chicano dramatic literature, the course will analyze playwrights and theatre groups that express the Chicano experience in the United States, examining relevant actors, plays, and documentaries for their contributions to the developing Chicano theatre movement.

ETHN 133. Hispanic American Dramatic Literature (4)

(Cross-listed with TDHT 111.) This course examines the plays of leading Cuban American, Puerto Rican, and Chicano playwrights in an effort to understand the experiences of these Hispanic American groups in the United States.

ETHN 134. Immigration and Ethnicity in Modern American Society (4)

(Cross-listed with HIUS 180.) Comparative study of immigration and ethnic group formation in the United States from 1880 to the present. Topics include immigrant adaptation, competing theories about the experiences of different ethnic groups, and the persistence of ethnic attachments in modern American society. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.

ETHN 135A. Early Latino/a-Chicano/a Cultural Production: 1848 to 1960 (4)

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(Cross-listed with LTSP 150A...