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CCSRE Academic Programs

An education in CCSRE prepares you to speak your values, heal your communities, and come into your power.

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Faculty Director's Welcome

Welcome to Academic Programs at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. 

Our CCSRE Academic Program offerings extend to both undergraduate and graduate students. To undergraduate students we offer the opportunity to major or minor in one of five interdisciplinary academic areas: Asian American Studies, Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Jewish Studies, and Native American Studies. To graduate students we offer a series of courses in fulfillment of our PhD minor. Our student body takes courses in anthropology, art, communications, economics, education, feminist/gender/sexuality, history, languages, linguistics, literature, music, philosophy, political science, theater, psychology, sociology, and religion, among others. With over 140 faculty affiliates across the University in a wide range of schools and academic disciplines, CCSRE Academic Programs provides to students who major or minor in one of our programs a broad range of resources and interdisciplinary courses relevant to the study of race and ethnicity in the United States and abroad. 

Our undergraduate curriculum is flexible and dynamic.  Our core course sequence provides students with essential knowledge about the formation of race and ethnicity, while a rigorous and engaging set of more than 150 courses allows students to explore new passions and examine long-standing interests. Our graduate curriculum for the PhD minor provides the analytical tools for understanding how racial and ethnic categories form, how and why these categories are significant, and how they are represented and reimagined. Regardless of the specific program a student chooses, all CCSRE majors and minors can investigate the various meanings of race and ethnicity through internships, community engagement, and original research.

The first degree in Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity was conferred in 1998. Only one CSRE B.A. degree and one CSRE minor were granted that year. The following year, seventeen students earned Bachelor's degrees in CSRE, and each of the existing programs in the CSRE family of programs (Asian American Studies, [then] Chicana/o Studies, and Native American Studies) conferred at least one B.A. major and one B.A. minor to graduating students. Since that time, CCSRE has granted bachelors degrees and minors to over 450 students.

As a faculty member who helped design the Interdepartmental Program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity when the Center was founded, I understand that creating new knowledge and sharing it with students depends on a close relationship between teaching and learning. Both are activities motivated by discovery and the sharing of what we learn. I teach because I love learning and challenging students to learn. My CCSRE colleagues and I measure success by the degree to which, in the end, our students teach and challenge each other and us as well.

Ramón Saldívar

Director of Academic Programs, CCSRE 
Professor of English and Comparative Literature  
Hoagland Family Professor of Humanities and Sciences