Current issues facing Ethnic Studies departments
I stumbled onto this article from last November on insidehighered.com.
It's a nice quick summary of many of the issues that are apparently facing Ethnic Studies departments, as they were discussed at a meeting of the American Studies Association.
I don't teach ES but these issues absolutely mirror what I've seen, working on campuses in diversity awareness trainings and discussions.
Two tastes for you:
"...When scholars at the meeting gathered in Washington Saturday to consider ethnic studies in the classroom, they talked about the need to rethink how their discipline fits into academe and how their courses reach students. Specifically, they called for more emphasis on teaching not one ethnic group, but on the way different groups interact and change one another. And they traded ideas on how to reach white students — many of whom sign up for their courses and are then stunned and angry to have their assumptions challenged."
..."AnaLouise Keating, an associate professor of women’s studies at Texas Woman’s University, says that a major challenge for her is getting students beyond a “monolithic, pseudoscientific” sense that racial categories are precise and unchanging. She wants students to realize that the status associated with various races is not unchanging — and she wants to do this in a way that makes white students truly examine themselves, but not just engage in “non-productive, navel-gazing guilt.” "
Would have liked to have heard more of the discussion. Enjoy the article.
image from One Drop of Blood by Scott Malcomson - a book on this topic that has been highly recommended to me, but I have not read it yet.