Ethnic Studies

This course introduces a field of sociology which is rapidly developing in France: ethnic and racial studies, the study of ethno-racial inequalities, and the process of racialization. The course provides an initial introduction to the field of race studies, as well as the main conceptual and methodological debates that are at the heart of this discipline, and more largely, in the public debate.

This course examines the impact of recent developments in the political and economic relations of Latin American countries-- especially Argentina, Peru, and Brazil-- with East Asian countries-- China, Japan, and South Korea.

This course explores the basic skills of performing and expressing the meaning of songs through actions, as well as the settings in which they are performed. Students perform a complete bracket of kapa haka items in front of an audience consisting of a haka powhiri, waiata, action song, poi, and haka. Furthermore, students introduce each item; name the composer(s) and history of the item; and demonstrate the individual compositions, appropriateness in powhiri (ritual encounter of welcome), and knowledge of Maori protocols. The course also examines the Maori creation story, significant Polynesian ancestors, and constituent parts of the marae and wharenui.

This course examines the Asian diaspora in Latin America. It explores issues of immigration and cultural hybridity as related to descendants and national identity. This course discusses the intertwined relationships among power, representation, and cultural production. It engages visual culture, popular culture and film, and other media, as a means to underscore the role that cultural production has played in transforming, adapting, and sustaining normative ideas regarding ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in relation to citizenship.

This course examines Māori, Pacific and Indigenous peoples’ philosophies and relationships with land, language, culture, resources, development and political frameworks within settler-colonial states and Pacific nations and others.

This course examines policies and programs dealing with ethnic relations based on the experiences of Singapore and Malaysia. It focuses on how these much talked about and debated policies, impact or affect the Malays in particular, who constitute a numerical minority in Singapore, but form the majority in Malaysia. The course examines major socio‐historical factors conditioning these policies and programs and the processes by which they are materialized from the period of British colonialism to the present. How these efforts bear upon nation building and national integration is explored.