;

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: cres@ucsc.edu

Phone: (831) 459-2757

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:

CRES10Critical Race and Ethnic Studies: An Introduction

5

Upper-Division Courses

Two upper-division courses are required for the major:

CRES100Comparative Theories of Race and Ethnicity

5

CRES101Research 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
FILM165BRace on Screen

5

FILM165DAsian Americans and Media

5

FILM165EChicana/o Cinema, Video

5

HAVC140AAmerica in Art

5

HAVC140BVictorian America

5

HAVC140CRace and American Visual Arts

5

HAVC140DChicano/Chicana Art: 1970-Present

5

HAVC141BDeath, Desire, and Modernity

5

HAVC141FThe Camera and the Body

5

HAVC141KActivist Art Since 1960: Art, Technology, Activism

5

HAVC142Contemporary Art and Ecology

5

HAVC190JVisual Cultures of the Vietnam-American War

5

HAVC191BThe Virgin of Guadalupe: Images and Symbolism in Spain, Mexico, and the U.S

5

HAVC191CSubalternatives: Representing Others

5

HAVC191EFeminist Theory and Art Production

5

HAVC191KDecolonial Visual Culture

5

Humanities
FMST123Feminism and Cultural Production

5

FMST124Technology, Science, and Race Across the Americas

5

FMST126Images, Power, and Politics: Methods in Visual and Textual Analysis

5

FMST131The Politics of Matter and the Matter of Politics

5

FMST139African American Women's History

5

FMST145Racial and Gender Formations in the U.S

5

HIS104CCelluloid Natives: American Indian History on Film

5

HIS104DMuseums and the Representation of Native American History, Memory, and Culture

5

HIS106BAsian and Asian American History, 1941-Present

5

HIS109ARace, Gender, and Power in the Antebellum South

5

HIS110DThe Civil War Era

5

HIS110HGreater Reconstruction: Race, Empire, and Citizenship in the Post-Civil War United States

5

HIS111Popular Conceptions of Race in U.S. History, 1600-Present

5

HIS116AUnchained Memory: Slavery and the Politics of the Past

5

HIS120W.E.B. Du Bois

5

HIS121AAfrican American History to 1877

5

HIS121BAfrican American History: 1877 to the Present

5

HIS122AJazz and United States Cultural History, 1900-1945

5

HIS122BJazz and United States Cultural History, 1945 to the Present

5

HIS123Immigrants and Immigration in U.S. History

5

HIS124American Empire

5

HIS125California History

5

HIS125AIndigenous Histories of California

5

HIS128Chicana/Chicano History

5

HIS145Gender, Colonialism, and Third-World Feminisms

5

HIS150EHistory and Memory in the Okinawan Islands

5

HIS151AMedicine and the Body in the Colonial World

5

HIS158AThe Escapes of David George: Biographical Research on Slavery and Early America

5

HIS170CFrom the Trenches to the Casbah: France and its Empire in the 20th Century

5

HIS177ASlaves, Soldiers, and Scientists: History of the Tropics

5

HIS184BRacism and Antiracism in Europe: From 1870 to the Present

5

HIS190DAsian and Latino Immigration Since 1875

5

HIS190XHistory of the Atlantic World, 1492-1824

5

HIS190YThe Atlantic Slave Trade

5

HIS194IU.S. Bases and Social Movements in Asia

5

HIS194TWorlds of Labor in Asia

5

HISC117
/CRES 117
Making the Refugee Century: Non-Citizens and Modernity

5

LIT102Translation Theory

5

LIT121LGreen Ache: Ecopoetics, Race, and Material

5

LIT125HModern Arabic Novel

5

LIT133HHaunted by the Forgotten War: Literature and Film of the Korean War

5

LIT134ACaribbean Literature

5

LIT135FEmpire and After in the Anglophone Novel

5

LIT135GPostcolonial Writing

5

LIT138ACulture and Nation

5

LIT138BRegions in American Literature

5

LIT145AColonial American Literatures

5

LIT146DNineteenth-Century American Fiction

5

LIT147ATwain, Slavery, and the Literary Imagination

5

LIT149BContemporary American Literature

5

LIT149EModern Fiction and Poetry

5

LIT160ETheorizing Race and Comics

5

LIT160IRace, Militarism, and Empire in Asia and the Pacific

5

LIT160KRace, Labor, and Migration

5

LIT161AAfrican American Literature

5

LIT161BAfrican American Women Writers

5

LIT162AAsian American Literature

5

LIT163AAmerican Indian Literature

5

LIT164AJewish Travel Narratives

5

LIT164DJewish Diaspora, Ethnicity, and Urban Life

5

LIT164JJewish Writers and the American City

5

LIT165BLatino Fictions of the Americas

5

LIT168AThe Culture of Islamic Law

5

LIT169AWhite Flow(n): Race, Gender, and Material

5

LIT182ILittérature d'expression française hors de France

5

LIT183PFremdenangst: Ausländerfeindlichkeit in der deutschen Literatur und Kultur

5

LIT189FLiteraturas Latinas en los Estados Unidos: en inglés, español y Spanglish

5

LIT190YTopics in Jewish Literature and Culture

5

Social Sciences
ANTH110LDecolonizing Methodologies

5

ANTH110Q
/CRES 110Q/FMST 110Q
Queer Sexuality in Black Popular Culture

5

ANTH130ONative Feminisms, Gender, and Settler Colonialism

5

ANTH131Gender in Cross-Cultural Context

5

ANTH149Anthropology of Activism

5

ANTH158Feminist Ethnographies

5

ANTH187Cultural Heritage in Colonial Contexts

5

ANTH196JImagining America

5

CMMU101Communities, Social Movements, and the Third Sector

5

CMMU145Global Capitalism: a History of the Present

5

CMMU163Health Care Inequalities

5

ECON128
/LGST 128
Poverty and Public Policy

5

EDUC104Ethical Issues and Teaching

5

EDUC125Multicultural Children's Literature for Elementary Classrooms

5

EDUC128Immigrants and Education

5

EDUC141Bilingualism and Schooling

5

EDUC160Issues in Educational Reform

5

EDUC164Urban Education

5

EDUC173Seminar in Critical Pedagogy

5

EDUC177Teaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students Math and Science

5

EDUC181Race, Class, and Culture in Education

5

LALS112Immigration and Assimilation

5

LALS128
/OAKS 128
Latino Media in the U.S

5

LALS131Latino Literatures: Assimilation and Assimilability

5

LALS143Race and Ethnicity

5

LALS144Mexicana/Chicana Histories

5

LALS180Borders: Real and Imagined

5

LGST111B
/POLI 111B
Civil Liberties

5

LGST135Native Peoples Law

5

POLI110
/LGST 110
Law and Social Issues

5

PSYC153The Psychology of Poverty and Social Class

5

PSYC155Social-Community Psychology in Practice

5

PSYC159HCommunity-Based Interventions

5

PSYC159IPsychology of Immigration

5

SOCY120Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Sexuality and Cultural Politics

5

SOCY121Sociology of Health and Medicine

5

SOCY123
/LGST 123
Law, Crime, and Social Justice

5

SOCY126Sex 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

SOCY132Sociology of Science and Technology

5

SOCY133Currents in African American Cultural Politics

5

SOCY139TCommunity-Engaged Research Practicum

5

SOCY145Sociology of Masculinities

5

SOCY148Educational Inequality

5

SOCY152Body and Society

5

SOCY156U.S. Latinx Identities: Centers and Margins

5

SOCY168Social Justice

5

SOCY169Social Inequality

5

SOCY170Ethnicity and Race

5

SOCY171Exploring Global Inequality

5

SOCY172Sociology of Social Movements

5

SOCY173XWater and Sanitation Justice

5

SOCY174Twenty-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
HAVC110Visual Cultures of West Africa

5

HAVC111Visual Cultures of Central Africa

5

HAVC115Gender in African Visual Culture

5

HAVC116African Architecture

5

HAVC117Contemporary Art of Africa

5

HAVC118Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora

5

HAVC119Arts and Politics of African Urban Space

5

HAVC123AModernity and the Arts of India

5

HAVC124BHistory of Photography in Southeast Asia

5

HAVC162AAdvanced Studies in Early Indigenous American Visual Culture: The Ancient Maya

5

HAVC163The Native in Colonial Spanish America

5

HAVC170Art of the Body in Oceania

5

HAVC172Textile Traditions of Oceania

5

HAVC179Topics in Oceanic Visual Culture

5

HAVC190OBerlin: History and the Built Environment

5

HAVC190WArt and Culture Contact in Oceania

5

HAVC190XArt and Identity in Oceania

5

Division of the Humanities
FMST112
/POLI 112
Women and the Law

5

FMST115Gender, Sexuality, and Transnational Migration Across the Americas

5

HIS101COceans in World History

5

HIS106AVietnam War Memories

5

HIS110AColonial America, 1500-1750

5

HIS116Slavery Across the Americas

5

HIS126From Indigenous Colonial Borderlands to the U.S.-Mexico Border

5

HIS130History of Modern Cuba

5

HIS134AColonial Mexico

5

HIS134BHistory of Mexico, 1850 to Present

5

HIS137AAfrica to 1800

5

HIS137BAfrica from 1800 to the Present

5

HIS137CAfrican Cinema

5

HIS140DRecent Chinese History

5

HIS150CInventing Modern Japan: The State and the People

5

HIS155History of Modern Israel

5

HIS156Interrogating Politics in the Post-Colonial Middle East

5

HIS157The Ottoman Empire

5

HIS158C
/ANTH 179
Slavery in the Atlantic World: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives

5

HIS166Northern Ireland: Communities in Conflict

5

HIS178EModern Jewish Intellectual History

5

HIS181BAfrica and Britain in an Imperial World

5

HIS185ILatin American Jewish History in the Modern Period

5

HIS185JThe Modern Jewish Experience

5

HIS190ASlavery and Race in Latin America

5

HIS190BRace and the Nation in Latin America

5

HIS190NTopics in African History

5

HIS194UThe Cold War and East Asia

5

HIS196NEastern European Jewish Social History

5

LIT131CWorldings

5

LIT133FPacific Rim Discourse

5

LIT133GThe Nuclear Pacific

5

LIT133IGlobal Japan: Literatures of the Japanese Diaspora

5

LIT135ATopics in African Literature

5

LIT137AGlobal Cities

5

LIT149FContemporary Mexican Narrative

5

LIT155ACinema and Subjectivity

5

LIT155ECinema and Social Change in Latin America

5

LIT160JExile, Diaspora, Migration

5

LIT162BLiterature of the Asian Diaspora

5

LIT164CGlobal Jewish Writing

5

LIT164GLiterature and the Holocaust

5

LIT164HJewish Writers and the European City

5

LIT165AChicano/Mexicano Geographies

5

LIT165CMesoamerican Indigenous/Indigenista Literature

5

LIT189ADe la conquista a Sor Juana

5

LIT189ECuba

5

LIT189HLa Globalizacion en/del Cine Latin/o Americano

5

LIT189LPoesía latinoamericana

5

LIT189MProsa contemporánea hispanoamericana

5

LIT189NLatinoamericano testimonio

5

LIT189OEl Cuento Hispanoamericano: Variedades esteticas de la literatura breve en America Latina

5

LIT189PLas mujeres en la literatura latinoamericana

5

LIT189QFicción y marginalidad

5

LIT189SLa cultura popular en la narrativa latinoamericana

5

LIT189THistoria de la lectura y los lectores: Recepcion y consumo cultural en el mundo Latino Americano

5

LIT189UModernidad y literatura: El Boom de la novela latinoamericana

5

LIT189VAndean Indigenismo

5

LIT190OStudies in Slavery, Race, and Nation in the Americas

5

Division of the Social Sciences
ANTH110O
/HIS 181A
Postcolonial Britain and France

5

ANTH110PIndia and Indian Diaspora through Film

5

ANTH129Beyond Borders: Other Globalizations and Histories of Interconnection

5

ANTH130AAnthropology of Africa.

5

ANTH130CPolitics and Culture in China

5

ANTH130F
/CRES 130
Blackness In Motion: Anthology of the African Diasporas

5

ANTH130ICultures of India

5

ANTH130LEthnographies of Latin America

5

ANTH130TReligion and Politics in the Muslim World

5

ANTH159Race and Anthropology

5

ANTH194XWomen in Politics: A Third World Perspective

5

EDUC170East Asian Schooling and Immigration

5

EDUC171South and Southeast Asian Schooling and Immigration

5

LALS100Concepts and Theories in Latin American and Latina/o Studies

5

LALS115Mexico-United States Migration

5

LALS127Genero, Nacion Y Modernidad En El Cine

5

LALS145Grassroots Social Change in Latin America

5

LALS150Afro-Latinos/as: Social, Cultural, and Political Dimensions

5

LALS152Consumer Cultures Between the Americas

5

LALS165Contemporary Peru

5

LALS170Indigenous Struggles in the Americas

5

LALS171Brazil in Black and White

5

LALS172Visualizing Human Rights

5

LALS175Migration, Gender, and Health

5

LALS178Gender, Transnationalism, and Globalization

5

LALS194HCentral America and the United States

5

POLI140CLatin 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

FMST194QQueer 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

FMST194QQueer 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