Ethnicity, Race, and Migration (B.A.)

Required Courses

ER&M 200a, Introduction to Ethnicity, Race, and Migration  Alicia Camacho

Historical roots of contemporary ethnic and racial formations and competing theories of ethnicity, race, and migration. Cultural constructions and social practices of race, ethnicity, and migration in the United States and around the world.  HU, SO
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

* ER&M 300a or b, Comparative Ethnic Studies  Staff

Introduction to the methods and practice of comparative ethnic studies. Examination of racial formation in the United States within a transnational framework. Legacies of colonialism, slavery, and racial exclusion; racial formation in schools, prisons, and citizenship law; cultural politics of music and performance; social movements; and postcolonial critique.  SO
HTBA

AFAM 162b / AMST 162b / HIST 187b, African American History from Emancipation to the Present  Staff

An examination of the African American experience since 1861. Meanings of freedom and citizenship are distilled through appraisal of race and class formations, the processes and effects of cultural consumption, and the grand narrative of the civil rights movement.  WR, HU
HTBA

* AFAM 410b / AMST 310b / WGSS 410b, Interdisciplinary Approaches to African American Studies  Crystal Feimster

An interdisciplinary, thematic approach to the study of race, nation, and ethnicity in the African diaspora. Topics include class, gender, color, and sexuality; the dynamics of reform, Pan-Africanism, neocolonialism, and contemporary black nationalism. Use of a broad range of methodologies.  WR, HU, SO
HTBA

* AMST 405b / AFAM 406b, Autobiography in America  Robert Stepto

A study of autobiographical writings from Mary Rowlandson's Indian captivity narrative (1682) to the present. Classic forms such as immigrant, education, and cause narratives; prevailing autobiographical strategies involving place, work, and photographs. Authors include Franklin, Douglass, Jacobs, Antin, Kingston, Uchida, Balakian, Rodriguez, and Bechdel.  WR, HU
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* AMST 410a / HIST 166Ja / WGSS 409a, Asian American Women and Gender, 1830 to the Present  Mary Lui

Asian American women as key historical actors. Gender analysis is used to reexamine themes in Asian American history: immigration, labor, community, cultural representations, political organizing, sexuality, and marriage and family life.  WR, HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ANTH 366a / AMST 435a, Inequality in America  Kathryn Dudley

Sociocultural dimensions of social inequality in the contemporary United States. Ways in which the socioeconomic processes that produce inequality are inextricably embedded in worlds of cultural meaning; how those meanings are constructed and embodied in everyday practice. Perspectives from anthropology, sociology, economics, history, and popular media.  SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

ER&M 206a / PLSC 437a / SOCY 223a, The Politics of Ethnic and National Identity  Maria Jose Hierro

Introduction to the study of ethnic and national identity, their determinants and consequences in comparative perspective.  SO
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

ER&M 211a / EDST 144a / EVST 144a / SOCY 144a, Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration  Grace Kao

Exploration of sociological studies and theoretical and empirical analyses of race, ethnicity, and immigration, with focus on race relations and racial and ethnic differences in outcomes in contemporary U.S. society (post-1960s). Study of the patterns of educational and labor market outcomes, incarceration, and family formation of whites, blacks (African Americans), Hispanics, and Asian Americans in the United States, as well as immigration patterns and how they affect race and ethnic relations.  SO
MW 2:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 221b / AMST 206b / WGSS 222b, Introduction to Critical Refugee Studies  Quan Tran

Reconfiguring refugees as fluid subjects and sites of social, political, and cultural critiques. Departing from dominant understandings of refugees as victims, consideration instead of refugees as complex historical actors, made visible through processes of colonization, imperialism, war, displacement, state violence, and globalization, as well as ethical, social, legal, and political transformations. Focus on second-half of the twentieth century.  SO
W 9:25am-11:15am

ER&M 223a / AMST 209a / PLSC 262a, Race, Politics, and the Law  Daniel HoSang

Examination of how race—as a mode of domination and resistance—has developed and transformed in the United States since the early-twentieth-century. How political actors and social movements engage the law to shape visions of freedom, democracy, and political life. Consideration of critical race theory, political discourse analysis, intersectionality and women of color feminism, and American political development.  SO
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

ER&M 238a / AFAM 192a / AFST 238a / AMST 238a, Introduction to Third World Studies  Gary Okihiro

Introduction to the historical and contemporary theories and articulations of Third World studies (comparative ethnic studies) as an academic field and practice. Consideration of subject matters; methodologies and theories; literatures; and practitioners and institutional arrangements.  SO
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* ER&M 320a / AMST 335a, Indigenous Geographies  Laura Barraclough

This seminar examines the spatiality of indigenous communities, both on their own terms and in relationship to ongoing processes of settler colonialism. Focusing primarily on indigenous geographies and place-making practices in the settler United States, it explores the survivance and creativity of Native peoples in the face of persistent spatial violence. While rooted in the intellectual traditions of critical indigenous studies, we also engage scholarship from history, geography, architecture and planning, anthropology, sociology, and education. Topics include: land-based ways of knowing, relations of care, and identity/community formation; treaties, relocation, and reservation-making; ideologies and practices of property; urbanization, urban indigenous communities, and urban activism; cartography and Geographic Information Systems (GIS); movement and mobility; environmental justice hazards and activism; public memory, monuments, and place-names; the significance of borders (both national and local), especially in relationship to violence; and place-based efforts toward co-existence and solidarity in a more-than-human world. No formal prerequisites; prior coursework in Native American history or studies is helpful, but not required.  HU, SO
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

ER&M 325a or b / AFST 335a or b / HIST 335a or b, A History of South Africa  Daniel Magaziner

An introduction to the history of southern Africa, especially South Africa. Indigenous communities; early colonial contact; the legacies of colonial rule; postcolonial mismanagement; the vagaries of the environment; the mineral revolution; segregationist regimes; persistent inequality and crime since the end of apartheid; the specter of AIDS; postcolonial challenges in Zimbabwe, Angola, and Mozambique.  HU
HTBA

* ER&M 342a / HIST 372Ja / LAST 372a, Revolutionary Change and Cold War in Latin America  Gilbert Joseph

Analysis of revolutionary movements in Latin America against the backdrop of the Cold War. Critical examination of popular images and orthodox interpretations. An interdisciplinary study of the process of revolutionary change and cold war at the grassroots level.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 349a / AFAM 227a / AMST 227a / HIST 137Ja, From the Voting Rights Act to #blacklivesmatter  Staff

This course explores the period beginning from 1964 through the emergence of the #blacklivesmatter movement in 2013. Key concepts covered in this course include the Black Panther Party and rise of the Black Power movement; political campaigns of Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, and Barack Obama. The seminar concludes with an examination of the #blacklivesmatter movement and broader efforts addressing mass incarceration, poverty, and opportunity gaps in education.  HU
HTBA

* ER&M 370a / AMST 441a / HIST 130Ja, Indians and the Spanish Borderlands  Ned Blackhawk

The experiences of Native Americans during centuries of relations with North America's first imperial power, Spain. The history and long-term legacies of Spanish colonialism from Florida to California.  WR, HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 376b / MGRK 304b / PLSC 376b / SOCY 307b, Extreme and Radical Right Movements  Paris Aslanidis

Extreme and radical right movements and political parties are a recurrent phenomenon found in most parts of the world. Discussion of their foundational values and the causes of their continuous, even increasing, support among citizens and voters.  SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 380a / AFAM 373a / AMST 355a, White America  Aaron Carico

Critical exploration of how the whiteness of the United States and its institutions has been developed and maintained from the nineteenth century into the present. Special attention paid to the intersection of race and class, particularly to the position of poor whites. Examination of the politics and culture of American whiteness, texts include histories, literary essays, fiction, and films.  HU
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ER&M 387a, Migrants and Borders in the Americas  Alicia Camacho

Migration and human mobility across North America, with a focus on 1994 to the present. Critical and thematic readings examine Central America, Mexico, and the United States as integrated spaces of migration, governance, and cultural and social exchange. Migrant social movements, indigenous migration, gender and sexual dynamics of migration, human trafficking, crime and social violence, deportation and detention, immigration policing, and militarized security.  HU, SO
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ER&M 395a / ANTH 382a / EVST 345a / F&ES 384a, Environmental Anthropology  Michael Dove

The history and contemporary study of anthropology and the environment, with special attention to current debates regarding human environmental relations. Topics include: nature-culture dichotomy; ecology and social organization; methodological debates; politics of the environment; and knowing the environment.  SO
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 407a / AFAM 399a / AMST 341a, Race and Capitalism  Aaron Carico

This interdisciplinary seminar explores, both theoretically and historically, how racial formations are bound to the formations of capitalism. Focus on the American scene, with sustained inquiry on slavery, its commodity logics, and their residues. Consideration of the effects of immigration and globalization.  SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 409a / AMST 345a / WGSS 408a, Latinx Ethnography  Ana Ramos-Zayas

Consideration of ethnography within the genealogy and intellectual traditions of Latinx Studies. Topics include: questions of knowledge production and epistemological traditions in Latin America and U.S. Latino communities; conceptions of migration, transnationalism, and space; perspectives on “(il)legality” and criminalization; labor, wealth, and class identities; contextual understandings of gender and sexuality; theorizations of affect and intimate lives; and the politics of race and inequality under white liberalism and conservatism in the United States.  SO
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 416b / GMAN 411b / HUMS 342b / JDST 327b / LITR 406b, World Literature  Hannan Hever

The concept of world literature, from its origins in eighteenth-century cosmopolitanism represented by Herder and Goethe up to contemporary critical debates (Apter, Casanova, Cheah, Damrosch, Dharwadker, I. Hesse, Moretti, Mufti, Pollock, Said, Spivak). World literature in relation to national literature, German-language, and Jewish literature; translation, untranslatability, the effect of markets, diaspora, politics. Literary critical readings supplemented by exemplary literary texts in multiple genres. Student contributions based on individual linguistic backgrounds.  HU
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

* ER&M 419a / AFAM 390a / SOCY 319a, Ethnography of the African American Community  Elijah Anderson

An ethnographic study of the African American community. Analysis of ethnographic and historical literature, with attention to substantive, conceptual, and methodological issues. Topics include the significance of slavery, the racial ghetto, structural poverty, the middle class, the color line, racial etiquette, and social identity.  SO
M 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 425a / AMST 486a, Asian American Studies of Race, Colonialism, and Empire  Lisa Lowe

This interdisciplinary course examines three periods of Asian American history that are paradigmatic within Asian American Studies of race, colonialism, and empire: 19th century Chinese immigrant labor, the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II, and Korean Americans in 1992 Los Angeles. Studying these three examples in their national and global contexts, we consider Chinese immigrant railroad workers in relation to both conditions for emigration from China, and to Native American responses to U.S. settlement and expansion into the western frontier; the dispossession and incarceration of Japanese Americans in relation to wartime racialization of Mexican Americans, Blacks, and the longer history of U.S. war in Asia; and finally, we seek to understand the positioning of Korean Americans as "middlemen" in post-Civil Rights multiracial Los Angeles in relation to Korean War, and U.S. development and investment in the industrialization of South Korea. We explore how Asian American histories of racialized labor and citizenship in the U.S. are better understood in comparative relation to the histories of other groups, and with consideration of the longer histories of U.S. interventions in Asian countries of origin.  HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 435b / AMST 422b / HIST 151Jb, Writing Tribal Histories  Ned Blackhawk

Historical overview of American Indian tribal communities, particularly since the creation of the United States. Challenges of working with oral histories, government documents, and missionary records.  WR, HU
W 9:25am-11:15am

* ER&M 437a / THST 437a, Performance behind Bars: Sacred Music, Sacred Texts, and Social Justice  Ronald Jenkins

Through the study of theatrical works that have been adapted from sacred texts, the course introduces students to playwriting techniques helpful for writing their own scripts based on a socially conscious reading of sacred texts. Possible collaboration with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals in adapting Dante's Divine Comedy for the stage.  HU
HTBA

* ER&M 439a / AMST 439a, Fruits of Empire  Gary Okihiro

Readings, discussions, and research on imperialism and "green gold" and their consequences for the imperial powers and their colonies and neo-colonies. Spatially conceived as a world-system that enmeshes the planet and as earth's latitudes that divide the temperate from the tropical zones, imperialism as discourse and material relations is this seminar's focus together with its implantations—an empire of plants. Vast plantations of sugar, cotton, tea, coffee, bananas, and pineapples occupy land cultivated by native and migrant workers, and their fruits move from the tropical to the temperate zones, impoverishing the periphery while profiting the core. Fruits of Empire, thus, implicates power and the social formation of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation.  HU, SO
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

* ER&M 462a / AMST 462a / WGSS 463a, The Study of Privilege in the Americas  Ana Ramos-Zayas

Examination of inequality, not only through experiences of the poor and marginal, but also through institutions, beliefs, social norms, and everyday practices of the privileged. Topics include: critical examination of key concepts like “studying up,” “elite,” and “privilege,” as well as variations in forms of capital; institutional sites of privilege (elite prep schools, Wall Street); living spaces and social networks (gated communities, private clubs); privilege in intersectional contexts (privilege and race, class, and gender); and everyday practices of intimacy and affect that characterize, solidify, and promote privilege.  SO
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

HIST 119b / AFAM 172b, The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845–1877  David Blight

The causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War. A search for the multiple meanings of a transformative event, including national, sectional, racial, constitutional, social, gender, intellectual, and individual dimensions.  HU
TTh 10:30am-11:20am

HIST 264b / RSEE 268b, Eastern Europe since 1914  Staff