Program of Study

Program for class of '09 and some '10 degree students.
The major must be arranged in consultation with the Center’s Director of Undergraduate Studies. Students must take Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies and The History of Race in the US, at least two courses that treat specific racial and ethnic groups, and at least five courses that are international, or explicitly comparative, in scope. Also required are four courses within a designated area of study, preferably within a distinct social science or humanities discipline.

Program for NEW students and some class of '10 degree students.
The reforms to the CSER curriculum that were first sketched out in 2006-07 are now in place. Most important is the establishment of a common core for all of our majors and concentrators, composed of two courses: Colonizations-Decolonizations, which will be team-taught by Professor Mae Ngai and myself this Fall, and Race in Scientific and Social Practice which will be taught in the Spring by Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj. These two courses provide a common conceptual and historical foundation for CSER students. We are very excited about offering this new opportunity to our students. I wish to thank Professor Mae Ngai and Professor Abu El-Haj for their leadership in developing these offerings, and College Deans Yatrakis and Quigley for their support for curricular development. We welcome student feedback in this first pilot year. Students enrolling in one of the majors or concentrations in 2008 should review the requirements of each major in the fall.

It is required that Latino Studies majors undertake study of a foreign language relevant to their area of specialization. Students should consult with their major adviser to develop an appropriate program of foreign-language study.

Courses, Fall 2009

CSER W1010 Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies *required*

Gary Okihiro ~ T/R 1:10 - 2:25 PM ~ 703 Hamilton Hall An introduction to the historical and contemporary ideas and manifestations of “ethnic studies” as a field of study—its subject matters, its methodologies and theories, its literatures, and its practitioners and institutional settings.(MC)

CSER V3444 U.S. Cities in Transition

Catherine Fennell ~ T/R ~ 9:10 – 10:25 AM ~ 963 Schermerhorn Extension After decades of economic disinvestment, physical decline and social out-migration, the 1990s ushered in an era of urban revitalization in many U.S. cities, the effects of which resonate today. How can we situate these recent changes within a longer trajectory of urban change in the United States? What do we make of the contested claims on space, belonging and identity made by, or on behalf of, people living in changing urban places? How should we evaluate development interventions whose end results seem so often to diverge from their intentions?
This course will develop practical inroads into the problem of the changing American city that will both complement and complicate commonplace intuitions about the urban change we witness unfolding around us. Readings stay close to anthropological and ethnographic perspectives. We will consider how focusing on the meanings and experiences of everyday life in urban spaces can problematize ideals often associated with urban living, including various forms of diversity. Additional readings will introduce students to analytical perspectives on urbanism, race, ethnicity, space and citizenship. Taken together, readings, primary materials, discussions and a field trip will equip students with the tools to approach contemporary urban change with an anthropological lens.

CSER W3928 Colonizations/Decolonizations *required*

Gray Tuttle & Natasha Lightfoot ~ T 4:10 - 6:00 PM ~ 420 Hamilton This course explores the centrality of colonialism in the making of the modern world, emphasizing cross-cultural and social contact, exchange, and relations of power; dynamics of conquest and resistance; and discourses of civilization, empire, freedom, nationalism, and human rights, from 1500 to 2000. Topics include pre-modern empires; European exploration, contact, and conquest in the new world; Atlantic-world slavery and emancipation; European and Japanese colonialism in Asia, Africa, the Middle East. The course ends with a section on decolonization and post-colonialism in the period after World War II. Intensive reading and discussion of primary documents.

CSER W3990 Senior Thesis Seminar (two semester course)

Prof Frances Negron-Muntaner & TA Anjuli Kolb ~ R 2:10 - 4:00 PM The Senior Paper Colloquium provides undergraduate seniors with an academic context in which to develop their senior papers/theses for the majors administered by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (Comparative Ethnic Studies, Latino/a Studies, Asian American Studies). The Colloquium is required for all students who want to write a senior paper/thesis. In the senior paper/thesis, students explore in depth some topic of special interest to them by conducting extensive background reading and research.
The Senior Paper Colloquium focuses primarily on developing students’ ideas for their research projects and workshopping their written work. The course is designed to develop and hone the skills necessary to complete the senior paper. Students will receive guidance in researching for and writing an advanced academic paper. Conducted as a seminar, the colloquium provides the students a forum in which to discuss their work with each other. In the seminar, students will give and receive feedback and comment on each other’s work. While most of the course is devoted to the students’ work, during the first weeks of the term students will read and discuss several ethnic studies-oriented texts to help them gain insight into the kinds of research projects done in the field. These texts will serve as models on which students can base their own projects.

LATS W3919 Modernity in the Caribbean: The Emergence of Transnational Corporations

Liliana Gomez ~ W 11:00 AM - 12:50 PM The interrelations of the construction of race and modernity have been widely discussed, less so the role of corporations in the consolidation of racial discourses through labor. We will hence look carefully at the emergence of corporations and their constitution as a transnational phenomenon that either generated their own racial discourses or incorporated the racial ideologies from the 19th century, when the expansion of the capitalist production or globalization accelerated. The Caribbean represents a particular setting where the multiple labor and population migrations and the different imported ethnic groups over the centuries were part of a laboratory of modernity. In this sense, we will follow the hypothesis that 'race' has been as well constituted through labor. To do this, we will look at the different practices applied by the corporations as well as at the internal and external dynamics that constituted labor in the Caribbean, such as labor in the form of slavery or modern forms of labor. We will also look at the interrelations of race and gender, gender and labor. From within a critical and historical perspective we will follow the question of the construction of race through labor and comprehend it as integral part of modernization. The main aim of the class is to offer an in-depth overview to the topic. We will provide a primarily original and secondary bibliography that interprets and rationalizes that question.

Related Courses, Fall 2009

POLS W3245 RACE-ETHNICITY IN AMERCN PLTCS

Raymond A Smith ~ T/R 2:40 - 3:55 PM

SOCI V2420 RACE & PLACE IN URBAN AMER

Carla L Shedd ~ T/R 2:40 - 3:55 PM

ENGL W4200 CARIBBEAN DIASPORA LITERATURE

Frances Negron-Muntaner ~ T/R 10:30 - 11:50 AM

ANTH W4480 CRIT NATIVE/INDIGENOUS STUDIE

Audra Simpson ~ T/R 11:00 - 12:15 AM

ANTH V3090 INTRO TO NATIVE AMER STUDIE

Audra Simpson ~ T/R 2:40 - 3:55 PM

Courses, Spring 2010

CSER W1012 History of Racialization in the U.S. *required for class of '10 completing the old program*

Gary Okihiro ~ Day & Time TBA This course examines the development of race and racism through the study of significant historical issues that have defined the structures of the American nation-state and the interactions among its peoples. These include the relationship between free and un-free labor, the content of American citizenship as expressed by immigration policy and law, the controversy over inequality and religious ideology, expansion through empire, the ideology of private property and the system of capital expansion, labor movements and the critique of capital, and others. As race is not static, it is not treated as an ahistorical object, a pre-determined identity, or a uniform category of analysis. Traditionally, the history of race relations is noted as contact between already defined racial groups. The emphasis in this course is on the effort and labor required to maintain these social and economic differences over time and space, and how they were related to one another. Thus, I use the term “racialization,” which refers to the process by which one or many become raced. Similarly, nation-state formation is considered with the same analytic view, as a historical process within the context of other nation-state formations.

CSER W3906 Race in Scientific and Social Practice *required*

Catherine Fennell ~ M 11:00 AM – 12:50 PM ~ 420 Hamilton Hall This class presents a genealogy of the development of the race concept since the 19th century. Most centrally, we will examine the ways in which race has been conceptualized, substantiated, classified, managed and "observed" in (social) science and medicine. We will read that history of science in tandem with philosophical, anthropological and historical literatures on race and the effects of racial practices in the social and political world writ large. The class will address a series of questions, historical and contemporary. For example, how has the relationship betwen "race" and "culture" been articulated in the history of anthropology in particular, and in racial theory more broadly? How and why were particular phenotypes understood to signify meaningful biological and social differences? Can there be a concept of race without phenotype--a soley genotyppic racial grouping? More broadly, we will examine how particular scientific projects have intersected with, authorized or enabled specific social and political imaginations.

CSER W3940 Comparative Study of Constitutional Challenges Affecting Minorities

Liz OuYang ~ W 4:10 PM – 6:00 PM ~ 420 Hamilton

CSER W3xxx Representations of Native America

John Gamber ~ T/R 2:40 - 3:55 PM ~ Location TBA

CSER W3xxx Indigenous Peoples and Environment

Chie Sakakibara ~ T/R 9:10 - 10:25 AM ~ Location TBA This course is a worldwide survey of indigenous peoples' ongoing struggle to control and use natural resources, to have a say in determining the path of economic development, and to restrain the destructive tendancies of Western colonialism and economic globalization. These conflicts now comprise a global political movement that chcallenges the economic and political institutions of the West, one that has contributed significantly to changing the nature of old-fashioned international (i.e., state-to-state or country-to-country) relations. Our main task is to develop a basic understanding of where indigenous peoples fit in to the environmental conditions and the political, cultural, and economic practices that are part of these conflicts. You should keep up with both the reading assignments and the lectures. The lectures will be coordinated with the assigned readings, but will include information not in these readings.

CSER W3990 Senior Thesis Seminar (continued)

Prof Frances Negron-Muntaner & TA Anjuli Kolb ~ Day & Time TBA The Senior Paper Colloquium provides undergraduate seniors with an academic context in which to develop their senior papers/theses for the majors administered by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (Comparative Ethnic Studies, Latino/a Studies, Asian American Studies). The Colloquium is required for all students who want to write a senior paper/thesis. In the senior paper/thesis, students explore in depth some topic of special interest to them by conducting extensive background reading and research.
The Senior Paper Colloquium focuses primarily on developing students’ ideas for their research projects and workshopping their written work. The course is designed to develop and hone the skills necessary to complete the senior paper. Students will receive guidance in researching for and writing an advanced academic paper. Conducted as a seminar, the colloquium provides the students a forum in which to discuss their work with each other. In the seminar, students will give and receive feedback and comment on each other’s work. While most of the course is devoted to the students’ work, during the first weeks of the term students will read and discuss several ethnic studies-oriented texts to help them gain insight into the kinds of research projects done in the field. These texts will serve as models on which students can base their own projects.

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Courses, Spring 2009

CSER W1012 History of Racialization in the United States *required*

Gary Okihiro ~ T/R 1:10 - 2:25pm ~ Location TBA

CSER W3906 Race in Scientific and Social Practice *required for NEW majors/cons*

Nadia Abu El-Haj ~ W 11:00am – 12:50pm ~ 420 Hamilton

CSER W3935y Sex in the Tropics: Political History of Sexuality in the Caribbean

Frances Negron-Muntaner ~ R 11:00am - 12:50pm ~ 420 Hamilton Hall Limited Enrollment: 25
In most of the world, to say the Caribbean is to say sex. “Sex in the Tropics” is an interdisciplinary course that focuses on how specific sexualized discourses and practices have had a major impact on the region’s history, politics, economy, and global relations. Through the examination of literary and critical texts from and/or about Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Martinique, among other countries, this course will examine the power dynamics of sexuality in the context of conquest and slavery; the use of anti-gay policies and rape as means to crush dissent in Cuba and Haiti respectively; the development of sexual tourist economies; the role of literature and music in creating alternative discourses about sexuality; and the link between sexuality, power and freedom.

CSER W3940 Comparative Study of Constitutional Challenges Affecting Minorities

Elizabeth OuYang ~ W 4:10 - 6:00pm ~ 420 Hamilton Hall This course will examine how the American legal system decided constitutional challenges affecting the empowerment of African, Latino and Asian American communities from them 19th century to present. Topics include the denial of citizenship and naturalization to slaves and immigrants, government sanctioned segregation, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War !!, the prison industry, police brutality, post 9-11 detention issues, and voting rights. Course requirements include attendance at a community function involving constitutional issues, a mid-term and an interactive oral and written final project comparing the present day issues affecting racial minorities in New York City and proposing measures to collectively address the issue.

CSER W3943 Urban Ethnography

Susanna Rosenbaum ~ W 2:10 - 4:00pm ~ 420 Hamilton This advanced seminar will focus on urban ethnography, examining the significance of place to daily practices, social relations, and broader social norms.  Students will explore the processes of urban life, by reading contemporary urban ethnographies and conducting their own fieldwork projects.  Focusing on the global moment, the readings will underscore the urban as a process that brings together—and redefines—diverse groups of people.  The course will also emphasize knowledge production, how the ways we study the city inform its shape, categorizing its different populations and affecting how they relate to one another.  Urban ethnography began in an attempt to understand the pathologies of city life, often honing in on marginalized and minority groups.  These assumptions of pathology endured, influencing not just whom ethnographers studied, but the questions they asked, and in fact, their conclusions.  Including an important fieldwork component, this course provides students firsthand experience in the process of knowledge production and underscores the importance of these processes to the ways we see and understand social life.

CSER W3945y The Ethnographic Problem in Ethnic Studies

Nicholas DeGenova ~ T 11:00am - 12:50pm ~ 420 Hamilton Hall ~ Max 15 Students There would appear to be an intrinsic link between “ethnic studies” and the constellation of research practices and representational techniques that have come to be called “ethnography.” The relationship between Ethnic Studies and ethnography, however, is considerably more complex and problematic than might be presumed. The scholarly formulation of Ethnic Studies was pervasively premised upon an explicit critique of the complicity of conventional academic disciplines – anthropology and sociology foremost among them – with hegemonic and effectively white supremacist representations that silenced or pathologized racially subordinated groups. Hence, ethnography has an enduringly contradictory status in Ethnic Studies. This advanced undergraduate seminar will explore these tensions and contradictions, both with reference to the history of these intellectual debates as well as with recourse to the close reading of a variety of exemplary ethnographic works.

CSER W3962y Indigenous Identities: A Global Perspective

Jackie Grey ~ R 4:10 – 6:00pm ~ 420 Hamilton Hall This seminar examines the ways in which indigeneity around the world is understood and politically constructed. The course will ask: Who decides who is indigenous and what is invested in preserving the identity of indigenousness? Concepts such as “ethnicity,” “multiculturalism,” and “liberalism” will be explored during this discussion. The seminar will consider, as well, how aboriginal communities and governments co-exist with nation-states. We will examine indigenous identity and politics in Taiwan, Malaysia, Australia, Guatemala, Hawaii and continental North America. Working in teams, participants in the course will be asked to assess relationships between indigenous communities and states and will be encouraged to think about ways to improve relations.

CSER W3990 Senior Thesis Seminar

Claudio Lomnitz ~ M 4:10 - 6:00pm ~ 420 Hamilton The Senior Paper Colloquium provides undergraduate seniors with an academic context in which to develop their senior papers/theses for the majors administered by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (Comparative Ethnic Studies, Latino/a Studies, Asian American Studies). The Colloquium is required for all students who want to write a senior paper/thesis. In the senior paper/thesis, students explore in depth some topic of special interest to them by conducting extensive background reading and research.
The Senior Paper Colloquium focuses primarily on developing students’ ideas for their research projects and workshopping their written work. The course is designed to develop and hone the skills necessary to complete the senior paper. Students will receive guidance in researching for and writing an advanced academic paper. Conducted as a seminar, the colloquium provides the students a forum in which to discuss their work with each other. In the seminar, students will give and receive feedback and comment on each other’s work. While most of the course is devoted to the students’ work, during the first weeks of the term students will read and discuss several ethnic studies-oriented texts to help them gain insight into the kinds of research projects done in the field. These texts will serve as models on which students can base their own projects.

Related Courses, Spring 2009

Some courses may have prerequisites or applications, please consult departments directly for specific requirements.

ANTH V3850 PSYCHOANAL, COLONIALISM & RACE

Karen Seeley ~ M 2:10 - 4:00pm ~ Location TBA

CLEN W4930 Transpacific Approaches to American Lit

Wen Jin ~ M/W 4:10 - 5:25pm Location TBA Toward the end of the 19th-century, Robert Wilson Shufeldt, who became known as the opener of Korea in 1882, enthusiastically declared that the Pacific was the “ocean bride of America.”  His was not alone in harboring this sentiment.  This course is designed to explore the role of the Asia Pacific in the American literary and cultural imagination.     We will seek to generate new readings of some important texts in American literature since the mid-nineteenth century by placing them in the context of U.S. entanglements with the markets, peoples, and cultures lying across the Pacific.  We will also consider how transpacific approaches to American literature contribute to theories of translation and circulation, the capitalist world-system, and minority cultural production.  More importantly, by focusing on social, political, and cultural networks that link the U.S. with Asia, this course offers a preliminary survey of the emerging filed of Transpacific American Studies, which complements and complicates what has been conventionally known as Transatlanticism.  Literary readings include Herman Melville, Jack London, Ezra Pound, John Steinbeck, Thomas Pynchon, William Gibson, Alex Kuo, Amitav Ghosh; theoretical readings include Said, Lye, Dirlik, Derrida, Benjamin, Arrighi, Liu, Wallerstein, Frank, etc.

ENGL W3874y American Borderlands

Rachel Adams ~ T 2:10 - 4:00pm ~ Location TBA

HIST W3514y U.S. Immigration History

Mae M Ngai ~ M/W 5:40 - 6:55pm ~ Location TBA

History BC4411 RACE IN THE MAKING OF U.S.

Elizabeth D Esch ~ W 4:10 - 6:00pm Location TBA

PSYC G4615 The Psychology of Culture and Diversity

Valerie J Purdie ~ T 10:10am - 12:00pm ~ Location: 405 Schermerhorn Hall

SOCI G4121 Racial and Ethnic Inequality

Carla L Shedd ~ Time Date & Location TBA

SOCI V3247 IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCES, OLD/NEW

Jacqueline Olvera ~ M/W 11:00am - 12:15pm Location: TBA

Sociology BC3909 ETHNIC CONFLICT & UNREST

Jacqueline Olvera ~ T 11:00am - 12:50pm ~ Location TBA

Urban Studies V3460 RACE, GENDER, & URBAN VIOLENCE

Delia Mellis ~ T/R 1:10 - 2:25pm ~ Location TBA

Urban Studies V3820 SUBURBS: RACE, CLASS,CONFLICT

Gregory C Smithsimon ~ T 11:00am - 12:50pm Location TBA

Courses, Fall 2008

CSER W1010 Intro to Comparative Ethnic Studies *required*

Gary Okihiro ~ T/R 1:10 - 2:25pm ~ 608 Schermerhorn

CSER W3928 Colonization/Decolonization *required for NEW majors/cons*

Claudio Lomnitz & Mae Ngai ~ T 4:10 - 6:00pm ~ 420 Hamilton Hall

CSER W3917x Social Theory & Radical Critique in Ethnic studies

Nicholas de Genova ~ T 11:00am - 12:50pm ~ 420 Hamilton Hall ~ Max 15 Students The analytic categories and theoretical concepts of “race,” “nation,” and “colonialism” as well as the related notions of “culture,” “ethnicity,” “the state,” “society,” or “social formation” have been among the foremost and defining conceptual frameworks and presuppositions of various formulations of critical inquiry in Ethnic Studies. Furthermore, inasmuch as many Ethnic Studies scholars’ intellectual work is explicitly devoted not merely to the academic analysis of their manifold topics of study but also to the various formulations of radical social and political critique, one routinely encounters whole bodies of theoretical literature that plays a constitutive role in the most elementary framing of Ethnic Studies topics and themes. However, these theoretical foundations of Ethnic Studies seldom receive the methodical and judicious exposition and critical scrutiny that they deserve and require for the most rigorous possible consideration of the author’s arguments and conclusions. In short, there is in Ethnic Studies scholarship a heterogeneous but effectively canonical theoretical literature concerned with the most foundational contentions about “society” and politics, which seldom adequately emerges as an explicit and central concern for careful, detailed, and extended discussion and debate. This course will pursue a thorough investigation into the theoretical genealogies, intellectual histories, and ultimate analytical status of these operative and organizing conceptual rubrics.

CSER W3940 Comparative Study of Constitutional Challenges Affecting Minorities

Elizabeth OuYang ~ W 4:10 - 6:00pm ~ 420 Hamilton Hall This course will examine how the American legal system decided constitutional challenges affecting the empowerment of African, Latino and Asian American communities from them 19th century to present. Topics include the denial of citizenship and naturalization to slaves and immigrants, government sanctioned segregation, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War !!, the prison industry, police brutality, post 9-11 detention issues, and voting rights. Course requirements include attendance at a community function involving constitutional issues, a mid-term and an interactive oral and written final project comparing the present day issues affecting racial minorities in New York City and proposing measures to collectively address the issue.

CSER W3960 Global Intimacies

Susanna Rosenbaum ~ W 11:00 - 12:50 ~ 420 Hamilton This advanced seminar examines the (re)production of difference and inequality through and within the intimate.  In Western culture, we locate intimacy in spaces and relationships that are putatively 'natural' and 'enduring': love, family, desire, sexuality, the body, reproduction, etc.  From this perspective, intimacy remains outside of and irrelevant to broad-scale social processes.  Yet, intimate relationships and intimate spaces are key to the making of individuals and the social order.  Indeed, social norms shape intimacy, even as intimate spaces and relationships fashion, disrupt, and reconstruct this social order.  Seemingly invisible, these constant transformations are brought into sharp focus at the intersection of local and global regimes of value.  This course will focus on such processes, looking at various topics, including migration and sex, love and money, transnational adoption, mail-order marriages, sex tourism, and organ trafficking.

CSER W3220 Native Peoples of North America

Chie Sakakibara ~ T/R 9:10 - 10:25am ~ 503 Hamilton

Related Courses, Fall 2008

AFAM G4080 Topics in the Black Experience: Africa & Asia Engage America

Gary Okihiro ~ W 6:10 - 8:00pm

ANTH V3921 Anticolonialism

David Scott ~ W 2:10 - 4:00pm

Comp Lit W3370 Lit of the Black Atlantic

Brent Edwards ~ T/R 10:35 - 11:50am

ENGL W3935 Multiculturalism and Narrative Form

Wen Jin ~ R 4:10 - 6:00pm

HIST W4584 HIST-AFR-AMER HEALTH/HLTH MOVT

Samuel Roberts ~ M 4:10 - 6:00pm

HIST W4695x Modern Crime and Punishment in Historical Perspective

Frances Negron-Mutaner & Pablo Piccato ~ Time & Date TBA ~ Location TBA

HIST W4779 Slavery/abolition-Atlantic World

Natasha J Lightfoot ~ R 2:10 - 4:00pm

POLY W4471 Race-Ethnicity in American Politics

Raymond A Smith ~ T/R 2:40 - 3:55pm

SOCI W3970 Race & Place in Urban America

Carla L Shedd ~ R 2:10 - 4:00pm