ETST 100: Introduction to Ethnic Studies (FA24) (original) (raw)

According to the acclaimed ancestor James Baldwin, the construct of race in the United States is a “cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth” in which “we take our shape”. As he argues, “we find ourselves bound, first without, then within, by the nature of our categorization”. To this end, this course offers an introduction to core theoretical (and practical) foundations of critical race and ethnic studies, with an emphasis on comparative and intersectional approaches to the study of race and ethnicity. Together we will critically engage race and ethnicity as they intersect margins of (dis)ability, religion, class, sexuality, and gender alongside systemic cultural issues such as atrocities of war, reproductive policies, marriage laws, lynching, immigration, internment, enslavement, environmental injustices, cultural genocide, migration, unsafe working conditions, macro/micro aggressions, as well as delving into the history of the United States as a society structured in institutional dominance, with critical attention to racial capitalism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism. Within this course, we shall examine how the legacies of racial and colonial violence have given rise to “common sense” notions about race, naturalizing uneven distributions of power, resources, opportunities, and life chances; ultimately exploring how (seemingly) group-specific racial ideologies morph in their application to different groups and how the United States has wielded the power of exclusion and inclusion toward a White supremacist heteropatriarchal end. Additionally, we acknowledge that for many ethnic groups, the promise of national incorporation into American social culture has meant trauma, violence, dispossession, erasure, and death through time and space. Finally, we will look toward the future by considering how race-radical and decolonial movements have envisioned marginalized peoples as sources of revolutionary power through experiential knowledge and have conceived of race along liberationist lines rather than subordinate ones.