Ethnic Studies
We are delighted to welcome students to Ethnic Studies, which launched in fall 2024. This comes after years of student demands and institution building. Our department builds on the legacy of the former College of Ethnic Studies by serving minoritized communities, promoting empowerment and liberation, and integrating theory and practice throughout the curriculum. For more information, stop by our office in College Hall 103, email us at Ethnic.Studies@wwu.edu, and follow us on Instagram @wwu.ethnicstudies.
What is Ethnic Studies?
Ethnic Studies centers the histories, epistemologies and lived experiences of minoritized peoples and Indigenous Nations. Our approach is intersectional and transnational. Ethnic Studies courses challenge systems of power and oppression, and advance liberation, emancipation, and self-determining futures. Students critically analyze differences in power expressed by the state, civil society, and individuals. Students challenge social constructions of race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, and gender. Ethnic Studies stresses the unique perspectives, contributions, and knowledges of Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and other minoritized communities. Ethnic Studies also prepares students to do collaborative and ethical research.
Vision
Ethnic Studies aspires to empower new generations of leaders to create safe and resilient communities of belonging while forging futures free from systemic oppression.
Mission
Ethnic Studies at WWU will critically assess the lived experiences of racially minoritized and colonized peoples and their dignity in the face of subjugation, dispossession, and enslavement and its afterlives.
Core concerns that we explore are colonialism, imperial circuits of migration, border imperialism, social movements and resistance, and an ever-expanding carceral state. Interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches emphasized in our program include community-led research, literary criticism, critical discourse analysis, political economy, empirical methods, narrative production.
Welcome New Faculty!
Andy Rafael Aguilera
Dr. Andy Rafael Aguilera holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan as well as a graduate certificate in Latina/o studies from the Department of American Culture.
Before starting his PhD work, Andy served as a graduate assistant in the Latino Studies Program at Indiana University-Bloomington, where he also received his MA in history. His current research explores the conservative politics of Mexicans and Mexican Americans during the eras of the U.S.-Mexico War (1846-1848) and Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). More broadly, Andy is interested in questions of racial and ethnic identity formation through a relational lens.
Prior to coming to WWU, Dr. Aguilera was a Visiting Assistant Professor in American Studies at Dickinson College, where he taught courses on race and ethnicity in the United States and Latine/x studies. He has taught at various levels and institutions for a period of five years. This year, in addition to teaching the Introduction to Ethnic Studies, Andy will be offering two new courses on Latinx popular culture and Queering Latinidades. Welcome Andy!
Jane Wong
Associate Professor, Jane Wong, Ph.D. has joined the Ethnic Studies faculty and will be sharing an appointment with the English Department. Jane holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington. Her research interests include Asian American poetry and poetics, migration and transnational studies, digital humanities, food studies, and interdisciplinary arts. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Bellingham Review and is the author of the memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023), which won the 2024 Washington State Book Award.
We are excited to see Jane expand our offerings in Asian American studies as she infuses our curriculum with a flair of creative writing and poetry.