Department Mission

The mission of the Department of Ethnic Studies is to provide a cohesive framework for the study of the interaction of racial and ethnic communities of the United States, focusing particularly on those that have been exploited through historical, social, and legal barriers, and whose histories and cultures have been historically overlooked in mainstream academia. We offer curricular foci on Afroamerican, American Indian, Chicano, and Asian American communities and have also incorporated into the curriculum the more traditional discipline of American Studies. We promote research and critical examination of these communities, to create knowledge of racial/ethnic and gendered oppression, to help empower disenfranchised communities, and to play a positive role in America’s ongoing efforts to become a truly multiracial and multicultural society.

In accomplishing its mission, the Department of Ethnic Studies also helps to redefine the “American Experience” as the nation becomes more involved with increased global diasporas of people and ideas. Acceptance and appreciation of these developments will require a new kind of cultural sensitivity and competency quite different from the more traditional curricular foci of course offerings in the College of Arts and Sciences. Although the department offers a set of courses for the major that explicitly takes a comparative approach, many other courses still concentrate on the experiences of a particular racial or ethnic group. In part, this is necessary to compensate for the lack of understanding of all those deemed “minorities” in this society, but the department continues to strive to accomplish the level and complexity of comparative studies toward which it aspires.