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.
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.
Core Beliefs
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.
This program of study also prepares our students to do collaborative and ethical research.