Race and Ethnic Studies
2026-27 Core and Elective Courses
RACE 121: Introduction to Race and Ethnic Studies
(Fall 26 – Section A: Lau Malaver, and Section B: Megan Awwad) & (Spring 27 – SooJin Pate)
This course provides an introduction to critical concepts and key readings about race and racism that are important to the field of Ethnic Studies. Focusing on identities and communities, students learn about racial formation and difference in U.S. and comparative cultural and historical contexts. How does race intersect with class, gender, nation, and sexuality to produce privileges and oppressions? Students survey the emergence of Ethnic Studies through literary texts, including art, creative writing, film, music, popular culture, and/or the sciences to become acquainted with interdisciplinary approaches and how concerns for racial equity and social justice formed this academic field.
OLE Core credits: CRE and PAR.
RACE 235: Race & Citizenship
(Fall 26- Malaver)
This course examines how U.S. citizenship is shaped by race and intersecting relations of labor, class, gender, and sexuality. Students analyze how citizenship defines inclusion and exclusion across national and local contexts from the nineteenth century to the present. Through interdisciplinary perspectives, students explore racialized histories of rights, state power, and violence while considering alternative visions of belonging, justice, and equity emerging from critical ethnic studies.
RACE 250: Seminar on Critical Indigenous Studies
(Spring 27 – Awaad)
This seminar engages substantively with Indigenous voices, knowledges, and struggles for liberation, moving beyond institutional land acknowledgments toward grounded decolonial analysis. Centering marginalized perspectives, the course investigates the relationship between Indigenous communities and dominating colonial narratives. Students explore environmental and climate justice through the lens of race, power, and structural inequality, drawing on a rich genealogy of decolonial theory, ethnic studies, and transnational scholarship. Using interdisciplinary methodologies, students engage with multimedia archives including oral histories, literature, poetry, and visual discourse. The course is designed for students seeking to identify and analyze complex problems rooted in inequity, and through community-oriented learning, participants develop theoretical frameworks to understand and address the pressing challenges facing Indigenous communities today.
OLE Core credits: CRE and PAR.
RACE 396: Research and Creativity- Capstone
(Spring 27- Jaden Janek)
How is academic work in Race and Ethnic Studies enabled or transformed by an openness to creativity? And how is creative work–in fields such as film, music, literature, and visual art–enabled or transformed by research? In this seminar, students encounter foundational and contemporary work that addresses one or both of these questions. In the second half of the semester, students pursue individual projects (academic, creative, or both) that serve as their response. Offered annually in the spring semester.
Open to RACE senior concentrators, and RACE junior majors and concentrators by permission of the instructor. OLE Core credit: OEP
Elective Courses
Please see the complete listing of permanently approved courses that count towards a RACE major or concentration. ***For lists of upcoming electives in other departments and programs, please search SIS for courses listed under the Race and Ethnic Studies major/concentration.***