Critical Race and Ethnic Studies B.A.

Information and Policies

Introduction

Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) majors develop a deep understanding of how race and other modalities of power have structured human life in the past and the present. Students acquire an understanding of the historical production of race and ethnicity in the United States and across the globe. They learn how the contours of race and racism have changed over time and, concomitantly, how individuals and groups have experienced these phenomena in constantly morphing ways. Students examine present-day racial/ethnic ideologies such as multiculturalism, colorblindness, and postracialism as well as contemporary social phenomena such as changing working conditions, new migration patterns, and emergent cultural expressions. Students also explore the ways that race and ethnicity have developed in concert with gender, sexuality, class, indigeneity, citizenship, and other modalities of power and lived identity.

CRES majors make critical use of methods and concepts from different academic disciplines as a means of better understanding historical and contemporary social phenomena and problems. In the process, they learn to recognize both the limits and the value of established knowledge production practices. The configuration of the major allows students flexibility at the upper division to design a course of study that enables a general understanding of a range of issues of intellectual and professional interest and/or a deeper understanding of a key area of focus. Students may craft an elective distribution from several areas of specific research and career interests. Or, they may wish to take a number of elective courses in a particular area to develop expertise in it. For example, they may wish to focus on a social group (e.g., members of the African Diaspora), on a discipline (e.g., history), on a social phenomenon (e.g., social movements), or on a methodological or theoretical orientation (e.g., theories of race, gender and sexuality).

Through their immersion in a program of study that is multidisciplinary, comparative, and transnational in scope, CRES majors develop a critical, situated perspective on the rights, responsibilities, and privileges of being a citizen of the United States or residing in its borders in the 21st century. CRES also helps students develop skills in critical thinking, comparative analysis, the application of social theory, research, communication, and writing so that they can act effectively in an ever-changing, complicated, and culturally diverse world.

Academic Advising for the Program

Email: [e-mail]

Phone: [phone]

CRES advising is held in Humanities 1, room 416.  Drop in hours are posted on the CRES website.  Students can make an appointment by using the Slug Success application found under Resources in their student portal (MyUCSC). 

Transfer students should consult the Transfer Student Information and Policy section for specific requirements.

Getting Started in the Major

Students interested in the CRES major do not need preparation to start in the major, but must be enrolled in or have completed CRES 10 to declare the major. (Please see the section "How to Declare a Major" for details.) All requirements of the major can be completed within two years.

Program Learning Outcomes

Students who complete the CRES major should emerge with the following skills, competencies, and knowledge:

Critical Frameworks

• Demonstrate deep knowledge of historical, contemporary, and intersectional perspectives on race and ethnicity.
• Demonstrate familiarity with different disciplinary methods applied to race and ethnicity.
• Demonstrate a critical perspective on institutional power and knowledge.

Communication

• Demonstrate ability to account for other people’s arguments, to formulate one’s own arguments, and to locate both arguments in the larger context of the field.
• Demonstrate ability to formulate an argument in alternative media, such as speech, audiovisual, digital, and other forms of non-written communication.
• Demonstrate writing effectively in the interdisciplinary field.

Research

• Demonstrate ability to design and implement a collaborative research project.
• Demonstrate ability to design and implement an independent research project.

Community Collaboration, Engagement, and Activism

• Demonstrate an understanding of the issues, ethics, and methods surrounding activist, collaborative, and community-based research projects.
• Demonstrate an understanding of collaborative knowledge that effectively integrates theoretical and experiential thinking about social justice.

Major Qualification Policy and Declaration Process

Major Qualification

Students must be enrolled in or have completed CRES 10, with a C or better, in order to declare the major. Transfer students should consult the Transfer and Information Policy section below.

Appeal Process

A student may file an appeal with the CRES adviser within 15 days of the denial of major declaration. The CRES program will notify the student and the college of the decision within 15 days of the receipt of the appeal.

How to Declare a Major

Students may declare the major by submitting a proposed Petition for Major/Minor Declaration to the program adviser. The major declaration should include a plan to complete CRES 100 and CRES 101 at the next possible opportunity.

Per campus policy, students must submit their major declaration no later than the third quarter of their sophomore year or, in the case of transfer students, no later than the second quarter of their junior year. CRES welcomes students to declare after this time frame who are pursuing more than one major or who are transferring from another major.

Transfer Information and Policy

Transfer Admission Screening Policy

Students planning to apply in this major are not required to complete specific major preparation courses for consideration of admission to UC Santa Cruz.

Getting Started at UCSC as a Transfer Student

Students must be enrolled in or have completed CRES 10, with a C or better, in order to declare the major. Transfer students and students in exceptional circumstances may substitute an equivalent course with the program director’s or undergraduate director’s approval. 

Letter Grade Policy

This program does not have a letter grade policy.

Course Substitution Policy

CRES is an interdisciplinary major that includes courses taught by faculty in other departments (see the Electives section below for a list of approved courses). Students who wish to substitute a course not on the electives list should complete the Petition for Course Credit form available on the CRES website and submit the completed form to CRES advising.   

Double Majors and Major/Minor Combinations Policy

The CRES major works very well as a double major with fields of study such as community studies, feminist studies, education, legal studies, literature, politics, and more. 

Honors

CRES awards honors and highest honors in the major. At the end of each quarter, a faculty committee meets to review graduating student files. Students are considered for honors and highest honors based on their cumulative GPA, calculated from grades earned in coursework and the senior exit requirement undertaken for completion of the major. For honors, students must earn a minimum GPA of 3.70 in the relevant courses, while for highest honors, the GPA must be 3.90 or higher. Writing a thesis is not a requirement for receiving honors or highest honors.

Requirements and Planners

Course Requirements

To graduate with a major in CRES, a student is required to complete 10 courses with the approval of the program.

Lower-Division Courses

One lower-division foundation course:

CRES10

Critical Race and Ethnic Studies: An Introduction

5

Upper-Division Courses

Two upper-division courses are required for the major:

CRES100	Comparative Theories of Race and Ethnicity	5
CRES101	Research Methods and Writing in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies	5

Students may petition to substitute a department-based, community-engagement course or social-movements course for CRES 101. 

Electives

Students must complete at least six upper-division electives offered in critical race and ethnic studies (with the CRES designation) or from the lists below. For current offerings, please visit the CRES course page.

• At least two electives must be from the list of designated courses focusing on phenomena outside of the U.S. or on transnational or hemispheric subjects.
• At least two academic divisions must be represented in the elective coursework.

Students are encouraged to supplement their upper-division coursework with language study, internships, and individual or group independent studies. Students may petition to have up to 10 credits of such activities substituted for upper-division elective requirements, so long as these activities serve, or do not interfere with, the breadth requirements.

Arts

FILM165B	Race on Screen	5
FILM165D	Asian Americans and Media	5
FILM165E	Chicana/o Cinema, Video	5
HAVC140A	America in Art	5
HAVC140B	Victorian America	5
HAVC140C	Race and American Visual Arts	5
HAVC140D	Chicano/Chicana Art: 1970-Present	5
HAVC141B	Death, Desire, and Modernity	5
HAVC141F	The Camera and the Body	5
HAVC141K	Activist Art Since 1960: Art, Technology, Activism	5
HAVC142	Contemporary Art and Ecology	5
HAVC190J	Visual Cultures of the Vietnam-American War	5
HAVC191B	The Virgin of Guadalupe: Images and Symbolism in Spain, Mexico, and the U.S	5
HAVC191C	Subalternatives: Representing Others	5
HAVC191E	Feminist Theory and Art Production	5
HAVC191K	Decolonial Visual Culture	5

Humanities

FMST123	Feminism and Cultural Production	5
FMST124	Technology, Science, and Race Across the Americas	5
FMST126	Images, Power, and Politics: Methods in Visual and Textual Analysis	5
FMST131	The Politics of Matter and the Matter of Politics	5
FMST139	African American Women's History	5
FMST145	Racial and Gender Formations in the U.S	5
HIS104C	Celluloid Natives: American Indian History on Film	5
HIS104D	Museums and the Representation of Native American History, Memory, and Culture	5
HIS106B	Asian and Asian American History, 1941-Present	5
HIS109A	Race, Gender, and Power in the Antebellum South	5
HIS110D	The Civil War Era	5
HIS110H	Greater Reconstruction: Race, Empire, and Citizenship in the Post-Civil War United States	5
HIS111	Popular Conceptions of Race in U.S. History, 1600-Present	5
HIS116A	Unchained Memory: Slavery and the Politics of the Past	5
HIS120	W.E.B. Du Bois	5
HIS121A	African American History to 1877	5
HIS121B	African American History: 1877 to the Present	5
HIS122A	Jazz and United States Cultural History, 1900-1945	5
HIS122B	Jazz and United States Cultural History, 1945 to the Present	5
HIS123	Immigrants and Immigration in U.S. History	5
HIS124	American Empire	5
HIS125	California History	5
HIS125A	Indigenous Histories of California	5
HIS128	Chicana/Chicano History	5
HIS145	Gender, Colonialism, and Third-World Feminisms	5
HIS150E	History and Memory in the Okinawan Islands	5
HIS151A	Medicine and the Body in the Colonial World	5
HIS158A	The Escapes of David George: Biographical Research on Slavery and Early America	5
HIS170C	From the Trenches to the Casbah: France and its Empire in the 20th Century	5
HIS177A	Slaves, Soldiers, and Scientists: History of the Tropics	5
HIS184B	Racism and Antiracism in Europe: From 1870 to the Present	5
HIS190D	Asian and Latino Immigration Since 1875	5
HIS190X	History of the Atlantic World, 1492-1824	5
HIS190Y	The Atlantic Slave Trade	5
HIS194I	U.S. Bases and Social Movements in Asia	5
HIS194T	Worlds of Labor in Asia	5
HISC117 /CRES 117	Making the Refugee Century: Non-Citizens and Modernity	5
LIT102	Translation Theory	5
LIT121L	Green Ache: Ecopoetics, Race, and Material	5
LIT125H	Modern Arabic Novel	5
LIT133H	Haunted by the Forgotten War: Literature and Film of the Korean War	5
LIT134A	Caribbean Literature	5
LIT135F	Empire and After in the Anglophone Novel	5
LIT135G	Postcolonial Writing	5
LIT138A	Culture and Nation	5
LIT138B	Regions in American Literature	5
LIT145A	Colonial American Literatures	5
LIT146D	Nineteenth-Century American Fiction	5
LIT147A	Twain, Slavery, and the Literary Imagination	5
LIT149B	Contemporary American Literature	5
LIT149E	Modern Fiction and Poetry	5
LIT160E	Theorizing Race and Comics	5
LIT160I	Race, Militarism, and Empire in Asia and the Pacific	5
LIT160K	Race, Labor, and Migration	5
LIT161A	African American Literature	5
LIT161B	African American Women Writers	5
LIT162A	Asian American Literature	5
LIT163A	American Indian Literature	5
LIT164A	Jewish Travel Narratives	5
LIT164D	Jewish Diaspora, Ethnicity, and Urban Life	5
LIT164J	Jewish Writers and the American City	5
LIT165B	Latino Fictions of the Americas	5
LIT168A	The Culture of Islamic Law	5
LIT169A	White Flow(n): Race, Gender, and Material	5
LIT182I	Littérature d'expression française hors de France	5
LIT183P	Fremdenangst: Ausländerfeindlichkeit in der deutschen Literatur und Kultur	5
LIT189F	Literaturas Latinas en los Estados Unidos: en inglés, español y Spanglish	5
LIT190Y	Topics in Jewish Literature and Culture	5

Social Sciences

ANTH110L	Decolonizing Methodologies	5
ANTH110Q /CRES 110Q/FMST 110Q	Queer Sexuality in Black Popular Culture	5
ANTH130O	Native Feminisms, Gender, and Settler Colonialism	5
ANTH131	Gender in Cross-Cultural Context	5
ANTH149	Anthropology of Activism	5
ANTH158	Feminist Ethnographies	5
ANTH187	Cultural Heritage in Colonial Contexts	5
ANTH196J	Imagining America	5
CMMU101	Communities, Social Movements, and the Third Sector	5
CMMU145	Global Capitalism: a History of the Present	5
CMMU163	Health Care Inequalities	5
ECON128 /LGST 128	Poverty and Public Policy	5
EDUC104	Ethical Issues and Teaching	5
EDUC125	Multicultural Children's Literature for Elementary Classrooms	5
EDUC128	Immigrants and Education	5
EDUC141	Bilingualism and Schooling	5
EDUC160	Issues in Educational Reform	5
EDUC164	Urban Education	5
EDUC173	Seminar in Critical Pedagogy	5
EDUC177	Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students Math and Science	5
EDUC181	Race, Class, and Culture in Education	5
LALS112	Immigration and Assimilation	5
LALS128 /OAKS 128	Latino Media in the U.S	5
LALS131	Latino Literatures: Assimilation and Assimilability	5
LALS143	Race and Ethnicity	5
LALS144	Mexicana/Chicana Histories	5
LALS180	Borders: Real and Imagined	5
LGST111B /POLI 111B	Civil Liberties	5
LGST135	Native Peoples Law	5
POLI110 /LGST 110	Law and Social Issues	5
PSYC153	The Psychology of Poverty and Social Class	5
PSYC155	Social-Community Psychology in Practice	5
PSYC159H	Community-Based Interventions	5
PSYC159I	Psychology of Immigration	5
SOCY120	Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Sexuality and Cultural Politics	5
SOCY121	Sociology of Health and Medicine	5
SOCY123 /LGST 123	Law, Crime, and Social Justice	5
SOCY126	Sex and Sexuality as Social Practice and Representation	5
SOCY128C /LGST 128C	Social History of Democracy, Anarchism, and Indigenism	5
SOCY128I /LGST 128I	Race and Law	5
SOCY132	Sociology of Science and Technology	5
SOCY133	Currents in African American Cultural Politics	5
SOCY139T	Community-Engaged Research Practicum	5
SOCY145	Sociology of Masculinities	5
SOCY148	Educational Inequality	5
SOCY152	Body and Society	5
SOCY156	U.S. Latinx Identities: Centers and Margins	5
SOCY168	Social Justice	5
SOCY169	Social Inequality	5
SOCY170	Ethnicity and Race	5
SOCY171	Exploring Global Inequality	5
SOCY172	Sociology of Social Movements	5
SOCY173X	Water and Sanitation Justice	5
SOCY174	Twenty-First-Century African American Social Structure	5

Transnational Requirement

Students must select at least two electives focusing on phenomena outside of the U.S. or on transnational or hemispheric subjects.

Division of the Arts

HAVC110	Visual Cultures of West Africa	5
HAVC111	Visual Cultures of Central Africa	5
HAVC115	Gender in African Visual Culture	5
HAVC116	African Architecture	5
HAVC117	Contemporary Art of Africa	5
HAVC118	Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora	5
HAVC119	Arts and Politics of African Urban Space	5
HAVC123A	Modernity and the Arts of India	5
HAVC124B	History of Photography in Southeast Asia	5
HAVC162A	Advanced Studies in Early Indigenous American Visual Culture: The Ancient Maya	5
HAVC163	The Native in Colonial Spanish America	5
HAVC170	Art of the Body in Oceania	5
HAVC172	Textile Traditions of Oceania	5
HAVC179	Topics in Oceanic Visual Culture	5
HAVC190O	Berlin: History and the Built Environment	5
HAVC190W	Art and Culture Contact in Oceania	5
HAVC190X	Art and Identity in Oceania	5

Division of the Humanities

FMST112 /POLI 112	Women and the Law	5
FMST115	Gender, Sexuality, and Transnational Migration Across the Americas	5
HIS101C	Oceans in World History	5
HIS106A	Vietnam War Memories	5
HIS110A	Colonial America, 1500-1750	5
HIS116	Slavery Across the Americas	5
HIS126	From Indigenous Colonial Borderlands to the U.S.-Mexico Border	5
HIS130	History of Modern Cuba	5
HIS134A	Colonial Mexico	5
HIS134B	History of Mexico, 1850 to Present	5
HIS137A	Africa to 1800	5
HIS137B	Africa from 1800 to the Present	5
HIS137C	African Cinema	5
HIS140D	Recent Chinese History	5
HIS150C	Inventing Modern Japan: The State and the People	5
HIS155	History of Modern Israel	5
HIS156	Interrogating Politics in the Post-Colonial Middle East	5
HIS157	The Ottoman Empire	5
HIS158C /ANTH 179	Slavery in the Atlantic World: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives	5
HIS166	Northern Ireland: Communities in Conflict	5
HIS178E	Modern Jewish Intellectual History	5
HIS181B	Africa and Britain in an Imperial World	5
HIS185I	Latin American Jewish History in the Modern Period	5
HIS185J	The Modern Jewish Experience	5
HIS190A	Slavery and Race in Latin America	5
HIS190B	Race and the Nation in Latin America	5
HIS190N	Topics in African History	5
HIS194U	The Cold War and East Asia	5
HIS196N	Eastern European Jewish Social History	5
LIT131C	Worldings	5
LIT133F	Pacific Rim Discourse	5
LIT133G	The Nuclear Pacific	5
LIT133I	Global Japan: Literatures of the Japanese Diaspora	5
LIT135A	Topics in African Literature	5
LIT137A	Global Cities	5
LIT149F	Contemporary Mexican Narrative	5
LIT155A	Cinema and Subjectivity	5
LIT155E	Cinema and Social Change in Latin America	5
LIT160J	Exile, Diaspora, Migration	5
LIT162B	Literature of the Asian Diaspora	5
LIT164C	Global Jewish Writing	5
LIT164G	Literature and the Holocaust	5
LIT164H	Jewish Writers and the European City	5
LIT165A	Chicano/Mexicano Geographies	5
LIT165C	Mesoamerican Indigenous/Indigenista Literature	5
LIT189A	De la conquista a Sor Juana	5
LIT189E	Cuba	5
LIT189H	La Globalizacion en/del Cine Latin/o Americano	5
LIT189L	Poesía latinoamericana	5
LIT189M	Prosa contemporánea hispanoamericana	5
LIT189N	Latinoamericano testimonio	5
LIT189O	El Cuento Hispanoamericano: Variedades esteticas de la literatura breve en America Latina	5
LIT189P	Las mujeres en la literatura latinoamericana	5
LIT189Q	Ficción y marginalidad	5
LIT189S	La cultura popular en la narrativa latinoamericana	5
LIT189T	Historia de la lectura y los lectores: Recepcion y consumo cultural en el mundo Latino Americano	5
LIT189U	Modernidad y literatura: El Boom de la novela latinoamericana	5
LIT189V	Andean Indigenismo	5
LIT190O	Studies in Slavery, Race, and Nation in the Americas	5

Division of the Social Sciences

ANTH110O /HIS 181A	Postcolonial Britain and France	5
ANTH110P	India and Indian Diaspora through Film	5
ANTH129	Beyond Borders: Other Globalizations and Histories of Interconnection	5
ANTH130A	Anthropology of Africa.	5
ANTH130C	Politics and Culture in China	5
ANTH130F /CRES 130	Blackness In Motion: Anthology of the African Diasporas	5
ANTH130I	Cultures of India	5
ANTH130L	Ethnographies of Latin America	5
ANTH130T	Religion and Politics in the Muslim World	5
ANTH159	Race and Anthropology	5
ANTH194X	Women in Politics: A Third World Perspective	5
EDUC170	East Asian Schooling and Immigration	5
EDUC171	South and Southeast Asian Schooling and Immigration	5
LALS100	Concepts and Theories in Latin American and Latina/o Studies	5
LALS115	Mexico-United States Migration	5
LALS127	Genero, Nacion Y Modernidad En El Cine	5
LALS145	Grassroots Social Change in Latin America	5
LALS150	Afro-Latinos/as: Social, Cultural, and Political Dimensions	5
LALS152	Consumer Cultures Between the Americas	5
LALS165	Contemporary Peru	5
LALS170	Indigenous Struggles in the Americas	5
LALS171	Brazil in Black and White	5
LALS172	Visualizing Human Rights	5
LALS175	Migration, Gender, and Health	5
LALS178	Gender, Transnationalism, and Globalization	5
LALS194H	Central America and the United States	5
POLI140C	Latin American Politics	5
SOCY128 /LGST 126	Law and Politics in Contemporary Japan and East Asian Societies	5
SOCY128M /LGST 128M	International Law and Global Justice	5

Disciplinary Communication (DC) Requirement

Students of every major must satisfy that major’s upper-division disciplinary communication (DC) requirement. The DC requirement in CRES is satisfied by completing one of the following courses:

CRES190A /FMST 194S	Critical Race Feminisms	5
FMST194Q	Queer Diasporas	5
FMST194U /CRES 190U	Touring War and Empire	5
FMST194V /CRES 190V	Marxism and Feminism	5

Comprehensive Requirement

One of the following courses:

CRES190A /FMST 194S	Critical Race Feminisms	5
FMST194Q	Queer Diasporas	5
FMST194U /CRES 190U	Touring War and Empire	5
FMST194V /CRES 190V	Marxism and Feminism	5

Planners

Four-Year Sample Academic Plan For CRES Major (Frosh)

Students must have satisfied the English language and writing requirement (ELWR) and have completed the C1 requirement in order to enroll in CRES 10. Students who place into C2 in their first fall quarter may enroll in CRES 10 in their first fall quarter.

	Fall	Winter	Spring
1st (frosh)
2nd (soph)	CRES 10	CRES 100	CRES 101
			CRES elective
3rd (junior)	CRES elective	CRES elective	CRES elective
		CRES elective
4th (senior)	CRES elective	CRES 190

Students must also complete all general education requirements except for ER, which is satisfied by CRES 10. 

Two-Year Sample Academic Plan for CRES Major (Transfer Students)

Transfer students should complete their general education (GE) requirements or IGETC before enrolling at UCSC, but this is not a requirement to complete the major within two years of transferring. The CRES major consists of 10 courses, allowing transfer students to complete about two CRES courses per quarter along with additional units to complete the required 180 units for graduation.

Sample Transfer-Students Academic Planner for CRES Major – Fall Admission

	Fall	Winter	Spring
1st (junior)	CRES 10	CRES 100	CRES 101
		CRES elective	CRES elective
2nd (senior)	CRES elective	CRES elective	CRES 190
	CRES elective	CRES elective