History of Ethnic Studies

Ethnic Studies 200A                                                                                Ross Frank
Fall 2007                                                                                                  Office:   SSB 227
Tuesday 10:00 - 12:50PM, SSB 253                                                        Phone:   534-6646
                                                                                                                      rfrank@weber.ucsd.edu

Original Syllabus (before the fires) Download this document ( PDF - Adobe Acrobat format)


Course Description

This course traces dominant modes of research on Race and Ethnicity as they have developed within the disciplines of Anthropology, Sociology, History, and Literature, among others.  Within this historical and intellectual context, we look for the ways that scholars related to Ethnic Studies have critiqued, extended, challenged, and incorporated elements of other disciplines, generating new perspectives and areas of research centering Race and Ethnicity in the process.
Books ordered.  Available at Groundwork Books:

Yen Le Espiritu, Home Bound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries , University of California Press , 2003.

W. E. B. Du Bois, Black reconstruction : an essay toward a history of the part which black folk played in America, 1860-1880. New York: Russel & Russel, 1935.

Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America , Oxford University Press, 1997.

Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism, Harvard University Press, 1986.

Robin D.G. Kelley, Yo Mama's Disfunktional, Beacon Press, 1998.

Melani McAlister. Epic Encounters Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. (not ordered, 2001 version available online)

Noenoe K. Silva. Aloha betrayed : native Hawaiian resistance to American colonialism. Durham, Duke University Press, 2004

Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things, Duke University Press, 1995.

Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America, Oxford University Press, 2002.

 



Evaluation

Seminar assignments will consists of:

1) Discussion:  attendance and active participation in the group discussions of the weekly readings during the seminar meetings;
2) Presentation:  lead one seminar discussion during the quarter (see guidelines below);
3) Response:  write two 4-5 page response papers, each covering the assigned readings for a different week.  Response papers are due at the beginning of class on the day that the readings are scheduled for discussion (see guidelines below);
4) Journal:  an assignment in reading and analyzing Journals of use to Ethnic Studies scholarship (1 person will present each week)
5) Term Paper:  one 10 page paper due December 10, in which you answer the question: 
"How have the disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, literature, and history addressed questions of race and ethnicity, and how has work from Ethnic Studies challenged those readings, and generated new perspectives and practices?"

Instructions:
 -     Choose a discipline;
 -     Identify a major journal of the discipline;
 -     Analyze the content of the journal for articles on race and ethnicity published since 1970;
 -     Characterize the predominant ways in which the articles published by the journal concerning questions of race and ethnicity have changed over time;
 -     Explain how scholars of Ethnic Studies have critiqued and transformed these approaches.

6) Colloquium:  lead a discussion about a selected Colloquium presenter in the seminar following the presentation.
Weekly assignments will be chosen by seminar participants during class in Week 1 or 2 to allow for as much flexibility as possible during the quarter.

Individual work will be evaluated as follows (100 points):
A. Discussion and seminar presentations form 50% of the grade:
            1) = 20 points;  2) = 10 points ;  4) = 10 points;  6) = 10 points:
B. The three written papers form 50% of the grade, as follows:  3) = 15 points each;  5) = 20 points.
You may make appointments to discuss seminar participation at any time.

I will be available to give mid-term evaluations in office hours after the Week 5 meeting

If this seems complicated you may forget about it entirely, so long you do the work


Guidelines for Seminar Presentations and Response Papers

In your presentations and response papers, do not merely summarize the author(s)'s arguments, but instead critically reflect on the main arguments of the text, using the following questions as guidelines:


Syllabus (revised 10/29/07)

Readings are marked in the syllabus according to the following:

*readings from the Ethnic Studies Graduate Reading List

G            available at Groundwork Bookstore.

D            will be distributed to the seminar.

W            available on course website:  http://weber.ucsd.edu/~rfrank

R            on reserve online at:  http:/reserves.ucsd.edu

NOTE:  remote access by proxy instructions: 
http://www-no.ucsd.edu/documentation/squid/


Week 1:   October 2    Introduction & Organization - What is Ethnic Studies?

Please read the following for the Week 1 seminar:

Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences, "What kind of Social Sciences Shall We Now Build?" in Open the Social Sciences : Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996, 70-93.  D

Yen Le Espiritu. "Disciplines Unbound: Notes on Sociology and Ethnic Studies." Contemporary Sociology 28.5 (1999): 510-514.  W & D

George Lipsitz. "Ethnic Studies at UCSD." La Jolla, c. 1999, 1-13.  D

Ramon GutiŽrrez,  "Chicano History: Paradigm Shifts and Shifting Boundaries," in Refugio I. Roch’n and Dennis N. ValdŽs, eds., Voices of a New Chicana/o History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000), pp. 91-114.  D

Joan Welsh, "As American as ethnic studies", Pacific News Service, Sept. 2, 1998.  W

Tommy Craggs, "Ethnic Warfare A bitchy academic fight within SFSU's College of Ethnic Studies puts the future of the program in question." San Francisco Weekly, 1/26/2005.  W

Gregory Rodriguez, "Academia's hidden crackpots: What kind of discipline would nurture a hatefilled academic such as fired professor Ward Churchill?" Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2007.  W


Week 2:    October 9     History of Ideas: Power and Knowledge

Thomas F. Gossett. Race : The History of an Idea in America. New York: Oxford, 1997.  G *

Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze. "The Color of Reason: The Idea of "Race" in Kant's Anthropology." Anthropology and the German Enlightenment: Perspectives on Humanity. Ed. Katherine M. Faull. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1995. 200-41.   W

Chandra Talpade Mohanty. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse." Third World Women and the Politics of  Feminism. Ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, Lourdes Torres. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991. 51-80.   W *

Donna J. Haraway. "Chapter Nine: Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. London: Free Association Books, 1991. 183-201.   W

Stuart Hall. "Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity." Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. Eds. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. London: Routledge, 1996. 412-40.   W *

      Colloquium ____________________________________________________________

      Presentation ___________________________________________________________

      Response ______________________________________________________________


Week 3:    October 16    The Immigrant and Ethnicity Paradigm

Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America, Oxford University Press, 2002.   G

Robert Ezra Park. "Chapter 9:  Our Racial Frontier in the Pacific." Race and Culture. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950. 138-151.   W *

Oliver C. Cox. "The Racial Theories of Robert E. Park and Ruth Benedict." The Journal of Negro Education 13.4 (1944): 452-463.   W

Milton Myron Gordon. "Chapter 3:  The Nature of Assimilation." Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins. New York,: Oxford University Press, 1964. 60-83.   W *

Michael Omi, and Howard Winant. "Chapter 1:  Ethnicity." Racial Formation in the United States : From the 1960s to the 1990s. Eds. Michael Omi and Howard Winant. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1994, 14-23.   W *

Sylvia Yanagisako, " Transforming Orientalism:  Gender, Nationality, and Class in Asian American Studies.Naturalizing Power: Eaasys in Feminist Cultural Analysis. New YourkL Routledge, 1995, 275-298.  W

Lisa Lowe. "Chapter 1:  Immigration, Citizenship, Racialization:  Asian American Critique;  Chapter 2:  Canon, Institutionalization, Identity:  Asian American Studies." Immigrant Acts : On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996, 1-59.   W *

      Colloquium ____________________________________________________________

      Presentation ___________________________________________________________

      Response ______________________________________________________________


Week 5:    October 30     Culture and Power

Robin D.G. Kelley, Yo Mama's Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America.  Beacon Press, 1998.   G

Oscar Lewis. "Introduction." La Vida; a Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty-San Juan and New York. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York,: Vintage Books, 1968, xi-lv.   W

Oscar Lewis. "Marta." The Children of Sanchez : Autobiography of a Mexican Family. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1966, 133-154.  W

Daniel Patrick Moynihan. "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." The Negro Family, the Case for National Action. Ed. United States. Dept. of Labor. Office of Policy Planning and Research. Washington, 1965. 126-159.   W

Laura Briggs. "Chapter 6:  "I Like to Be in America"." Reproducing Empire Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 162-192.  R

      Colloquium ____________________________________________________________

      Presentation ___________________________________________________________

      Response ______________________________________________________________


Week 6:  November 6    Class, Race, Whiteness, and Property

W. E. B. Du Bois, Black reconstruction : an essay toward a history of the part which black folk played in America, 1860-1880. New York: Russel & Russel, 1935.   G *

Edna Bonacich. "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market." American Sociological Review 37.5 (1972): 547-559.   W *

Cheryl Harris. "Whiteness as Property." [Part I, Part II] Harvard Law Review 106 (1993): 1709-1791.   W

George Lipsitz. "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness." The Possessive Investment in Whiteness : How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998, 1-23.    W *

David R. Roediger. "Chapter 5:  Class, Coons and Crowds in Antebellum America." The Wages of Whiteness : Race and the Making of the American Working Class. Rev. ed. London ; New York: Verso, 1999, 95-114.   W *

      Colloquium ____________________________________________________________

      Presentation ___________________________________________________________

      Response _____________________________________________________________


Week 7:    November 13     American Exceptionalism, Racial Others, and the Postcolonial

Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism, Harvard University Press, 1986.   G *

Curtis M. Hinsley. "Chapter V:  Spencer, Morgan, and Powell:  The Intellectual Framework of The Bureau of American Ethnology;  Chapter VII:  Heroes and Homelessness:  Reflections on Frank Hamilton Cushing, James Mooney, and Bae Anthropology." Savages and Scientists : The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology, 1846-1910. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981. 124-143; 190-230.   W *

Vicente M. Diaz. "Deliberating "Liberation Day": Identity, History, Memory, and War in Guam." Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(S). Eds. T. Fujitani, Geoffrey M. White and Lisa Yoneyama. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. 155-180.    W

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988. 271-313.  W *

      Colloquium ____________________________________________________________

      Presentation ___________________________________________________________

      Response ______________________________________________________________



Week 8:    November 20     Intersectionality I: Culture, Consumption, Race, and Nation

Melani McAlister. Epic Encounters Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.  W

Melani McAlister. Epic Encounters Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, last chapter & conclusion.  W

Anne McClintock. "Introduction" and "Chapter 1:  The Lay of the Land - Genealogies of Imperialism." Imperial Leather : Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995. 21-74.   W

Avery Gordon. "Chapter 1:  Her Shape and His Hand;  Chapter 5:  There Are Crossroads.Ghostly Matters : Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. 3-28;  193-211.     W *

      Colloquium ____________________________________________________________

      Presentation ___________________________________________________________

      Response ______________________________________________________________



Week 9:    November 27     Intersectionality II: Gender, Sex, Race, and Nation

Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things, Duke University Press, 1995.   G

Roderick Ferguson. "The Nightmares of the Heteronormative." Cultural Values 4.4 (2000): 419-44. W

Denise Ferreira da Silva, "Towards a Critique of the Socio-logos of Justice: The Analytics of Raciality and the Production of Universality."  Social Identities, 7:3 (2001), 421-454.  W

      Colloquium ____________________________________________________________

      Presentation ___________________________________________________________

      Response ______________________________________________________________


 

Week 10:    December 4    Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies

Noenoe K. Silva. Aloha betrayed : native Hawaiian resistance to American colonialism. Durham, Duke University Press, 2004.   G *

Claire Jean Kim. "Chapter 6:  Manufacturing Outrage." Bitter Fruit : The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. 188-220.   W

Yen Le Espiritu, Home Bound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries , University of California Press , 2003.   G

      Colloquium ____________________________________________________________

      Presentation ___________________________________________________________

      Response ______________________________________________________________


Ross Frank, Yen Le Espiritu, © 2005-07, all rights reserved