Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies
Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies Website
Associate Professors WONG (director), CHAN, MCKAY, & RATCHFORD; Assistant Professors ATUIRE, & TABARES
Race, ethnicity, and migration studies inform disciplines in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences as fundamental categories that produce and inflect knowledge. This interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transnational major prepares students to develop questions, knowledge, and research methodologies that contribute to and challenge a complex, globally connected world.
In the best tradition of the liberal arts at Colorado College, the major bridges the gap between theory and practice and classroom and community. Students explore how race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality are lived realities and shape history, geopolitics, culture, economies, and domestic and international policy. Students majoring in this program gain historical knowledge as well as a critical understanding of historiography and its impact on marginalized populations.
Major Requirements
The Major
Core Courses
RM185 Introduction to the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity
RM212 Theories of Race and Ethnicity
RM218 Critical Analysis of Quantitative Data
RM215 Research Design: Method and Theory
RM499 Senior Project: A research based, comparative, and intersectional analysis grounded in critical theories of race, ethnicity, and migration.
6 electives
Students will work closely with their major advisor to develop a course of study that addresses their interests and commitments. Elective courses must be cross-listed with REMS or approved by the director. Students may not take more than 3 elective courses at the 200-level to fulfill the major.
TOTAL: 11 Units
Minor Requirements
The Minor
- RM185 Introduction to the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity
- RM212 Theories of Race and Ethnicity
- RM218 Critical Analysis of Quantitative Data or another method course approved by advisor
Two courses in REMS approved by advisor
Courses
Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies
Surveys the musical cultures of the world in their social, historical, and theoretical contexts; develops comprehension of the essential philosophies and aesthetics of the music studied and the ability to identify, describe, and discuss various musical styles, compositional forms, and techniques through listening and performance exercises; emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach. (Not offered 2024-25).
The study of race as a dimension of inequality in the United States, Western Europe, Africa and Latin America. Individual and institutional forms of racism and discrimination. Historical, comparative and theoretical perspectives. (No credit if taken after SO/CS233). Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement.
This course introduces the global roots and dimensions of recent social change emphasizing development as a transnational project designed to integrate the world. Economic and political globalization and the powerful counter-movements responding to rising inequality in the global south are explored during the course. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
Two block course that introduces the full sweep of American History from its pre-contact, 'New World' beginnings to the recent past. Students will experience how history is made, understood, revised, and debated. Themes include cultural encounters and adaptation complexities of ethnicity and immigration; movement; the success and failures of republican ideology, capitalism, individualism and community; and the formation of American cultures. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
An interdisciplinary and intercultural introduction to the heritage of the American Southwest: its histories, its peoples, its cultures, its conflicting ethnic demands and common social problems. Through the use of a variety of anthropological, historical, and literary materials, the seminar examines the major Southwestern cultures in isolation and in relation to one another. No prerequisites. (Not offered 2024-25).
What are racism and sexism? Why are people prejudiced? What can be done to improve the strained relationship between groups? This course will introduce students to various frameworks for understanding prejudice, intergroup perception/relations, and the management of conflict between social groups. Students will examine case studies, psychology theories, and will think about their own perceptions of and interactions with people from different social groups. Students will also reflect on the notions of multiculturalism and social justice. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
Examines those social forces, both historical and contemporary, that have brought about racial and ethnic 'diversity' and 'difference' in the U.S. Attention to the histories and experiences of Native Peoples, African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans. Taking a comparative approach, it puts into focus the shared histories of racialization among these groups without losing sight of asymmetrical relations of power informing these histories. The course sheds light on the ways these groups position themselves and are positioned as racial subjects in distinct and historically specific ways but also in relational and mutually constitutive ways. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement.
Selected topics in the critical study of race and ethnicity. May be taught as block or half-block course.
An introduction to linguistic anthropology. Examines the interconnectedness of language and culture from ethnographic and sociolinguistic perspectives. Comparative study of speaking in cultural context aimed at understanding the ways in which people use talk to cooperate, manipulate, structure events, and negotiate identities. Cross-cultural focus, with examples from such languages and language varieties as Japanese, Navajo, Apache, French, African-American English, and Chicano English. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Provides a rigorous historical and theoretical understanding of the emergence of hip hop culture. The course examines how this expressive form both reflects and shapes existing social relations, and analyzes the relationship between hip hop, youth-politics, youth-violence, commercialization and globalization. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Examines how youth-based and youth-led social movements emerge, how youth conceptualize and frame issues of social justice, and how youth who occupy marginal positions provide critical perspectives on social change based on their race, class, gender and sexuality. Explores the role of expressive forms such as art and music in the formation, development, and trajectory of social movements and political activism. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Examines various theoretical and conceptual approaches to the study of race and ethnicity. Attention is given to the various ways race and ethnicity have been defined and understood including the ethnicity paradigm, class-based perspectives, and racial formation theory. Examines debates and controversies in the study of race and ethnicity as well as emergent themes and recent developments in the scholarship. Possible topics include a focus on the interrelations among race and other axes of difference such as gender, class, and sexuality, race and the structuring of space, the legal construction of race, race and media culture, and race and the prison-industrial complex. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement.
RM214 - Comparative Imperialisms: Empire, Nation-Building and World's Fairs and Expositions - 1 unit
Critical interrogation of U.S. imperialism and its enduring legacies through an examination of the shared experiences of colonization, conquest, displacement, and genocide among Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, and Native Hawaiians. To accomplish this, we will investigate a number of sites and contexts central to the relationship between empire-building and nation-building including, U.S. military installations, world’s fairs and expositions, and tourism. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course introduces students to research design, method, and theory across the humanities and social sciences. Students learn how to select a research topic or problem site, examine academic scholarship, gather data, and conduct critical analysis through the composition of an extended research project. Along the way, students come to understand the formal conventions of an academic research paper, while engaging critical writing and discourse across a range of disciplinary fields and practices, with emphases on topics pertaining to race, ethnicity, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, transnationalism, migration, globalization, and colonialism, among others.
Historically and in the contemporary world, data and statistics have been both used and abused in the process of understanding and responding to racial, ethnic, and migration-related phenomena. This course gives Race, Ethnicity, and Migrations Studies students the analytical tools, methods, and habits of mind to critically interpret and evaluate different kinds of data that they will encounter in their classes, research, and daily life. (Meets the Critical Perspectives: Quantitative Reasoning requirement.) 1 unit. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Quantitative Reasoning requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SA requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: SHB requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement.
An introduction to the relationships Blacks have had to the American cinema: as filmmakers, performers, audiences and as 'characters' whose image have formed a critical vocabulary for American race relations. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
The study of race as a dimension of inequality in the United States, Western Europe, Africa and Latin America. Individual and institutional forms of racism and discrimination. Historical, comparative and theoretical perspectives. (Not offered 2024-25).
Comparative study of various forms of movement and migration that continue to shape our understanding of America. Relying on political documents, visual images, films, music, and literature, we will focus on specific forms of movement and migration—westward expansion, 19th century European immigration, overseas expansion, the Great Migration, postwar suburbanization, and post-1965 immigration to the U.S. —and their role in the formation of American identity and society. The course offers students a rigorous and critical understanding of the different facets of migration. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Studies in the religious life of African-Americans from the 17th century to the present. Particular attention to religious organizations, theological formulations and experiential patterns of Black Americans and the relationship of those phenomena to American religious life in general. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
From the bilingual flatbed truck actors of Luis Valdez to the rhythmic coffee house choreo-poems of Ntozake Shange, this course focuses on the theatrical voices of the American marginalized. Our mission will be to examine the societal circumstances that birthed alternative styles to the mainstream American stage. Selected playwrights will cover a cross section of race, gender and sexuality, from Tony award winners to virtual unknowns. Equal parts historical analysis and creative writing workshop, students will create multimedia presentations and original plays based around their research. (Not offered 2024-25).
What do we mean when we say, “Asian American” or “Asian America”? Emerging from student activist movements in the 1960s and 1970s, these two terms signify an imagined community of highly diverse ethnic populations with very distinct cultural histories. In this way, “Asian American” and “Asian America” are social and political constructions that help us to think conceptually about nationhood, citizenship, identity, and belonging. This course explores literary and cultural production by and about Asian Americans from the nineteenth century to the present. We will analyze key concepts in Asian American Studies, including racism, empire, militarism, and activism; examine plantations, internment camps, and digital media platforms as social spaces; and engage a variety of textual modes and media to interrogate the constructed, pan-ethnic nature of Asian America as an imagined nation. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
The Aztec and other Indian peoples’ influence in Mexican history and thought; Spanish colonial legacy; Enlightenment, Liberal, and Conservative political philosophies; Mexico’s relationship to the United States; roles of the Church and of violence from European encounter through Revolution (1910-1921) and into Mexico’s current precarious social and political situation. (Not offered 2024-25).
with Emphasis on Writing). This course is designed to introduce students to several approaches in folklore studies and to Mexican material culture, religion, music, and prose narratives in the Southwest region of the United States. We will examine how the different approaches used by historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and folklorists can enhance the study of Hispanic folklore and material culture. (Limited to 12 students.) Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course will explore food concepts, analytical methods, and the food habits of different ethnic groups. The class will have a field trip to the San Luis Valley, and to Northern New Mexico to document the production of food among farmers, cattle ranchers and restaurateurs. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
African cultural backgrounds, African slavery in colonial British America and the U. S. to 1860; free Black people from 1790 to 1860 and antislavery movements. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement.
Black Reconstruction; Black urban settlement; literary and artistic movements in the 1920s; civil rights struggles; recent social and political expressions.
(Not offered 2024-25).
A thematic survey of Korean history from the earliest times to the present covering social, cultural and political developments from the Three Kingdoms period through the Silla unification, Koryo and Choson dynasties to the modern era. Special emphasis on the twentieth century. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
Introduces key concepts, epistemologies, worldviews, and focus areas of the multidisciplinary paradigm of Indigenous Studies. Using indigenous pedagogies, this course provides an overview of the histories, governance structures, economies, relationships to place and other beings, and cultures of Indigenous and Native Peoples of the US, from a decidedly indigenous perspective. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement.
(Not offered 2024-25).
This course will examine changing patterns of U.S. immigration policy in the U.S.-Mexican border region, with an emphasis on the criminalization of U.S. immigration policy, and assess this policy in the context of a broader review of immigration theory. Other issues that will be explored include: the conditions within Mexico and Central America that have generated emigration to the U.S., the nature/challenges of the migrant journey to the U.S., and the role that Latino labor plays in the U.S. economy. The class typically includes a field component along the U.S.-Mexico border. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The pre-contact history of Anasazi and Athabascan peoples from anthropological and mythological perspectives; the causes and consequences of the Spanish entrada and attempts at missionization of the Indian peoples of New Mexico and the California coast; development of mestizo society; the arrival of the Anglo-Americans and the Mexican-American War. (Not offered 2024-25).
The adaptation of Native American and Hispanic peoples to Anglo-American culture and politics; the causes and consequences of the loss of Hispanic lands; the evolution of family life and religious practices; indigenous views of modernity. Films, artistic expressions, and works of fiction as well as historical sources. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
An exploration of themes in African, Caribbean, and North American thought, this course looks closely at ways in which philosophers of the African diaspora have responded to colonialism, the process of decolonization, and the postcolonial situation. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
A survey of philosophical writings by Latin-American authors in the social and historical context of the region. Texts studied include Indigenous philosophies of the pre-Hispanic tradition, as well as those of the colonial and postcolonial periods. Particular attention will be devoted to issues that are central to this philosophical tradition, such as identity, consciousness through education, and philosophies of liberation. Our readings draw from Aztec or Maya sources, as well as from Leon-Portilla, Vasconcelos, Paz, Freire, Gutierrez, Dussel. (Not offered 2024-25).
Race is a social construct that invites a number of philosophical questions, such as those of identity, inter-subjectivity, justice, rationality, and culturally different ways of knowing. The course will examine, among others, philosophical reflections on race by the following thinkers: Douglass, West, Fanon, Vasconcelos, Appiah, Bernsaconi, Outlaw, Levinas, Mendieta. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Critical Learning: AIM requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
(Not offered 2024-25).
Selected advanced topics in the critical study of race and ethnicity.
Examines the rise of post-racialism in the contemporary era and in particular the logic and assumptions underlying this ideology. Considers how racially marginalized groups challenge post[racialism and how they provide an alternative vision of a post-racial world. The course brings together insights from various fields of study including postcolonial theory. Afrofuturism and indigenous futurism. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Examines the contours and trajectory of women of color feminisms in the United States. Considers how women of color feminisms broaden the parameters of feminism and how a critical consideration of race, class, sexuality and nation complicates the way we think about feminist theory and politics. Examines the nature of the relationships among women of color feminisms. Draws from Chicana feminism, Black feminism, indigenous feminism, Asian American feminism, and transnational feminism. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course introduces students to Critical Whiteness Studies, the scholarly interrogation of the social construction of whiteness: how whiteness converges with gender, socioeconomic status, and other social markers, to create and maintain fundamental sources of societal stratification. The course examines the historical and contemporary social, cultural, and political origins of and resistance to white supremacy and white privilege, particularly in the United States. Students will consider the economic and political forces responsible for the construction and maintenance of whiteness, and will critique the multiple axes of race, gender and class to understand the various mechanisms of privilege. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The intellectual history of sociocultural anthropology will form the foundation of this course. It will discuss the ideas and intellectuals who contributed to the development of anthropology as a scholarly discipline and will consider the following theoretical perspectives: evolutionism, functionalism, historical particularism, cultural materialism, and interpretive approaches. Also, it will examine field research strategies that shaped anthropology. (Not offered 2024-25).
Study of dance practices and their specific histories within and across cultures. Themes of embodiment, race, ethnicity, identity, migrational flows, appropriation and cultural exchange inform the analysis of the selected dance traditions, fusions and innovations. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course introduces students to key theories, mechanisms, and geographies of migration from various disciplines. The readings and discussions will focus on the analysis of the causes of internal and transnational migration flows as well as their consequences for the social, economic, political, diplomatic, and cultural dimensions of human experience in the past and in our time. The course will distinguish between the individual's motives and desires to move and the structural changes and events that encourage movement. 1 unit. (Not offered 2024-25).
Examines Black feminist theory through the lens of key Black feminists, such as bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker. Relying primarily on a guiding principle of Black feminism, the idea that racism, sexism, and class oppression are inextricably linked (also known as intersectionality), we will discuss various topics such as Black women’s relationships with Black men, motherhood, work inside and outside of the home, and religion and spirituality, among others.
This course examines the influence of gendered race relations on crime and justice within the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, age, and geographic region. Introduces key concepts and theoretical frameworks of critical race theory, critical feminist theory, intersectionality, and critical criminology to understand how social forces shape, foster, produce, and perpetuate inequalities throughout the main components of the criminal justice system: police, courts, and corrections. Covers victimization and criminal behavior patterns, theoretical explanations, and the dynamics of differential involvement of specific groups in the criminal justice system. (Not offered 2024-25).
An interdisciplinary course based on history, culture, and water issues. It will explore the cultural heritage and creativity of groups whose historical experience has been shaped by the Rio Grande basin from its origin in Colorado to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. The course will engage a broad American and international public in the exploration of how the river basin and the people who live within it change, evolve, and develop together, and can affect each other. Limited to 12 students. May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
A comparative analysis of the political experience and responses of major ethnic minorities and women to the American political process. (Not offered 2024-25).
Study for advanced students who wish to do work supplementary to that offered in the catalog.
This course examines theories of revolution through the lens of the Cuban experience. Special focus on the evolution of the Cuban regime and the evaluation of its performance. Additional topics include the analysis of U.S. policy toward the Castro government. Prerequisite: Political Science 335 or consent of instructor Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Comparative study of works of Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Cuban authors, as well as Latin American writers in exile in the United States, including political essays of Marti and Flores Magun and the contemporary works of Hinojosa, Mohr, Laviera, Rivera, Alegra, and Valenzuela. (Not offered 2024-25).
Critical study of the literary production of authors of Mexican heritage in the United States from 1848 to the present, with emphasis on contemporary Chicano works including Rivera, Anaya, Valdez, El Teatro Campesino, Cisneros, Castillo, and Moraga. (Offered alternate years.) (Not offered 2024-25).
The U.S.-Latin American Relationship: Explores the evolution of the U.S.- Latin American relationship over the last century. Focuses primarily on overt and covert intervention; the genesis and evolution of the drug war; and, the impacts of human migration. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
The goal of this course is to carefully study the work of the modern philosopher and political theorist Giorgio Agamben whose text Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life imagines the Concentration Camp as exemplar of an exceptional space of violence that creates a particular type of political subject. This course will interrogate the Camps and the Atlantic World’s Plantations to identify points of departure and convergence in these spaces of violent subject formation. The course will be taught in Italy, where it will be hosted at the University of Bologna’s Department of History and Culture where Italian theorists are doing work on radical Italian and Black American Political Thought. (Not offered 2024-25).
During the 1780s, a movement to abolish slavery and the slave trade gained momentum in Great Britain, catalysed by the loss of the North America colonies. This course considers changing representations of slavery in both British and American contexts as a function of both the immediate impact of empire and its legacy in the aftermath of the American Revolution. As the rise of the abolitionist movement coincided with the development of British Romanticism, we will examine the reciprocal relationship between literary production and the economic, social, and political events of the slave trade as it was rendered by those who encountered slavery first hand and through multiple generic modes of writing: memoir, poetry, drama, fiction, and political tracts. The course encourages a comparative approach both in terms of historical period and geographical location, and we will attempt to situate discussion of a wide range of literary texts in conceptual and theoretical frameworks that will facilitate the production of a critically informed response. Works examined will include poetry by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Moore, Wheatley, Opie, Cowper, Day, and Southey, prose tracts by Cugoano, Equiano, and Prince, and plays by Bellamy and Colman. We will also read theory and criticism by Fanon, Gilroy, Lott, Carey, Caretta, Lee, and Baucom. (Not offered 2024-25).
Selected fiction, poetry, and non-fiction prose which looks at a problem or theme in 19th-century British and/or American literature such as narratives of identity, archetypes of city and nature, the politics of genre, comparisons of British and American culture, and the nature of literary periods themselves. (Not offered 2024-25).
aris as a center for American, Caribbean, and African intellectuals from the black Diaspora. Readings from work of Aime Cesaire, Langston Hughes, Jessie Redmon Fauset, President Leopold Senghor, Eugene Bullard, Birago Diop and Cheikh Anta Diop. Emerging African and African American cultural identities; ideas of black nationalism within European, American and African society. Taught in Paris. Extra Expense $$$. Also taught as EN 385 and FR 308. (Students enrolling in FR 308 will do readings and write papers in French.) May meet either the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures or Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Readings in black American writers such as. W. E. B. Dubois, Ralph Ellison, Nella Larsen, and Rita Dove. Organized around aesthetic and cultural issues such as feminism, the 'anxiety of influence,' pressures of the marketplace, identity politics, and post-modern theory. (Not offered 2024-25).
Three centuries of texts by African-American women who have conspired with, rebelled against, and created literary traditions, such as Zora Neale Hurston, Pauline Hopkins, Rita Dove, Andrea Lee, and Nella Larsen. (Not offered 2024-25).
Advanced study of a topic chosen by the student in consultation with a member of the REMS Core Faculty and approved by the director.
Advanced study of a topic in Race, Ethnicity and Migration Studies required of all REMS majors. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement.