CES Requirements for Cross Listing

Critical Ethnic Studies Electives Must Meet the Following Requirements


Definition of Field

Critical Ethnic Studies interrogates the production of knowledge. The primary project is to theorize from multiple, and simultaneous, narratives of silenced people and epistemologies. Critical Ethnic Studies untangles and analyzes the colonial and racial projects that attempt to govern relationships among peoples and lands.

Epistemology

  • Employ de-colonial critical theory in analytical frameworks
  • Examine the relationships between indigenous, national and transnational perspectives
  • Assert epistemic rights to pluri-versal thinking (of other lands, truths, and languages)
  • Consider the simultaneity of inequalities, and the power structures enacted by race, class, gender, sexuality and spirituality
  • Interrogate the production of knowledge
  • Theorize from, and center, subjugated knowledges
  • Present and dwell in multiple worlds and voices


Historiography, Context, and Narrative

  • Interrogate, deconstruct and analyze world systems/colonization
  • Interrogate, deconstruct and analyze racial categorization/racism
  • Interrogate, deconstruct and analyze historical knowledge and the production of history
  • Reveal the unstable construction of dominant narratives
  • Question universal truths and narratives
  • Engage the concept of history, Western Civilization, European expansion, conquest and enslavement
  • Engage power relations and structures of power

Method (must engage one or more)

  • Interdisciplinary
  • Employ decolonizing methodologies (for a detailed explanation see Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, 2012)
  • Work from problems, where methods emerge from a decolonial and interdisciplinary framework. (For a detailed explanation see “Learn to Unlearn: Thinking Decolonially” in Learning to Unlearn: Decolonial Reflections from Eurasia and the Americas by Madina V. Tlostanova and Walter D. Mignolo


Pedagogy

  • Course design (including assignments and pedagogy) should integrate content into each course element in a way that asserts epistemic rights
  • Enact engagement
  • Promote lateral thinking
  • Attempt to deconstruct hierarchies of power in the course practice


Critical Ethnic Studies Cross Listing Process

Faculty wishing to have a course listed as a CES elective should submit their syllabus to the CES Core Faculty for review, with a single paragraph statement of
intent to include the course as a CES elective. Each submission will be reviewed by at least three CES Core Faculty members. Approved courses will be added to the list of electives. If a course is not deemed immediately acceptable as a CES elective, the faculty member submitting the course for review will receive
a detailed description of changes required for the course to be listed as a CES elective. Once those changes are made, the course will be added to the list of electives. Faculty members who desire further dialogue can schedule a meeting with a member of the CES Core Faculty.