Research/Creative Work

The department has 10 full time faculty members (one of whom has been on sick leave for the better part of 3 years). In addition to the regular faculty, the department has one full time instructor position; this position will be eliminated at the end of spring semester, 2006. From 2002 – 2005, this faculty has produced approximately 5 books; 10 forthcoming books; 50 articles or book chapters; probably another 12 forthcoming; dozens of encyclopedia entries, book reviews, and reviews for scholarly publications; served on numerous editorial boards; given 63 keynotes or invited lectures; 45 presentations; received dozens of awards for scholarship, teaching and community service.

The faculty have won numerous national and University awards for scholarship, teaching and service, including visiting professorships and fellowships. In addition, the faculty have served as consultants to a large member of national and international organizations including foundations, cultural and educational institutions, tribes, and government agencies. Faculty members also maintain memberships in an array of major professional organizations, with several faculty holding leadership and committee positions in most of them as well as being journal editors and serving on their advisory boards.

It is apparent that the faculty continue to demonstrate a high level of activity and involvement in their research, scholarly and creative work (see Appendix H). Many faculty members have successfully secured outside funding from such sources as the Ford, Rockefeller, and Schomburg Foundations, the Lilly Endowment and the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund. The DES faculty has also been very active in providing leadership to students involved in the UROP, honors and McNair programs. In addition, the faculty has contributed significantly to the intellectual climate of the University through service on an overwhelming number of theses and dissertation committees. Although the amount of service provided by DES faculty members is not discussed here, it is far in excess of what most faculty members contribute in other departments of Arts and Sciences. Our faculty serve on virtually all major College committees and many University-wide committees.

The research program is organized around the four ethnic content areas within the department. It should be noted, however, that although a faculty member's area of research concentration may focus on one of these four ethnic groups, much of their work is based on comparative analysis both in terms of theoretical and methodological frameworks. The strength of the faculty's research and creative work follows from this comparative analysis and perspective. The research and creative work of the faculty extends across a number of important areas. The primary areas of emphases and strength, as well recently developed areas of interest are as follows:

• Research in the areas of age and aging, Chicana and Indigenous feminist theory, transnationalism, globalization and gender studies and Cuban studies, and the development of a Chicana feminist sociology.
• A comprehensive synthesis of Africana philosophy, philosophy of race and and critical race theory with various strands of critical pedagogy, critical class theory, feminist theory, liberation theology, postmodernism, and postcolonial theory.
• Chicana history and historiography, feminist theory, Chicana lesbian novels and creative writing.
• Intersection of environmental, legal, and political history, including political biography.
• Comparative ethnic studies, Asian American history, American radicalism and social movements, race and assimilation in American politics and society.
• Criminalization of Latino/a youth and the demonization of Mexican border crossers. Systematic analysis of musical, autobiographic and filmic texts by Latina/o youth and undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
• American Indian, Hispanic, and rural populations of the American and Canadian West and Mexico. Ethnography, ethnohistory, cultural change, and cultural impact assessments with emphasis on social and cultural impacts of energy, nuclear, and regional development.
• An analysis of the Black experience – particularly as it relates to questions of education, science and technology as well as other aspects of social justice – in the transMississippi West, and in cities throughout this nation.
• Critical analyses of US Law relating to American Indians in particular, as well as its impact on race and ethnicity in general, for example, the Japanese American internment, immigration, political prisoners, tribunals on the Vietnam War.
• Critical analyses of governmental agencies role in the de-stabilization of such groups as the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. The genocidal impact of American Indian residential schools; Indigenous resistance to genocide, ecocide and expropriation in contemporary North America; literature, cinema, and the colonization of American Indians.

It is clear from the above areas of research, scholarship, and creative work , that the Ethnic Studies faculty play a major role in the mission of the university as a "diverse community of advanced learning with the highest standards of scholarship, in which research and creative work enrich the teaching of students who thrive in an academic community."