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 and have informed the imagination of social transformation and justice in the past and the present. They study the historical production of race and ethnicity both in the United States and across the globe, and learn how the contours of race and racism have changed over time. Students analyze systems of racial and colonial violence—for example, racial capitalism, white supremacy, settler colonialism and imperialist war. They examine historical racial/ethnic ideologies such 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 draw on methods and concepts from different academic disciplines in order to better understand historical and contemporary social phenomena and problems. By immersing themselves in interdisciplinary study, they learn to recognize both the limits and value of knowledge production practices. The major allows students flexibility at the upper-division level to design a course of study that enables a general overview of areas of interest or deep engagement with a key area of focus. Students can craft an elective distribution from multiple areas of specific research and career interests. Or, they may wish to take a number of elective courses in a particular area in order 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 race, racial relations, and racial justice in the United States and beyond. 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, complex, 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 numerous fields of study such as anthropology, community studies, creative writing, feminist studies, film and digital media, education, environmental studies, history, legal studies, literature, politics, sociology, and more.

Honors

CRES awards honors and highest honors in the major. 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:

CRES 10

Critical Race and Ethnic Studies: An Introduction

5

Upper-Division Courses

Two upper-division courses are required for the major:

CRES 100	Comparative Theories of Race and Ethnicity	5
CRES 101	Research Methods and Writing in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies	5

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

FILM 165B	Race on Screen	5
FILM 165D	Asian Americans and Media	5
FILM 165E	Chicana/o Cinema, Video	5
HAVC 140A	America in Art	5
HAVC 140B	Victorian America	5
HAVC 140C	Race and American Visual Arts	5
HAVC 140D	Chicano/Chicana Art: 1970-Present	5
HAVC 141B	Death, Desire, and Modernity	5
HAVC 141F	The Camera and the Body	5
HAVC 141K	Activist Art Since 1960: Art, Technology, Activism	5
HAVC 142	Contemporary Art and Ecology	5
HAVC 190J	Visual Cultures of the Vietnam-American War	5
HAVC 191B	The Virgin of Guadalupe: Images and Symbolism in Spain, Mexico, and the U.S	5
HAVC 191C	Subalternatives: Representing Others	5
HAVC 191E	Feminist Theory and Art Production	5
HAVC 191K	Decolonial Visual Culture	5

Humanities

CRES 111	The Sounds of Struggle	5
CRES 114	Race and Disability in American Drama	5
CRES 118	Abolitionist Futures	5
CRES 150	Race, Gender and Algorithms	5
CRES 181	The Lynch Doctrine: From Rough Justice to Stand Your Ground	5
CRES 185A	Race, Gender, and Science	5
FMST 123	Feminism and Cultural Production	5
FMST 124	Technology, Science, and Race Across the Americas	5
FMST 125	Race, Sex, and Technology	5
FMST 126	Images, Power, and Politics: Methods in Visual and Textual Analysis	5
FMST 131	The Politics of Matter and the Matter of Politics	5
FMST 139	African American Women's History	5
FMST 145	Racial and Gender Formations in the U.S	5
HIS 104C	Celluloid Natives: American Indian History on Film	5
HIS 104D	Museums and the Representation of Native American History, Memory, and Culture	5
HIS 106B	Asian and Asian American History, 1941-Present	5
HIS 109A	Race, Gender, and Power in the Antebellum South	5
HIS 110D	The Civil War Era	5
HIS 110H	Greater Reconstruction: Race, Empire, and Citizenship in the Post-Civil War United States	5
HIS 111	Popular Conceptions of Race in U.S. History, 1600-Present	5
HIS 116A	Unchained Memory: Slavery and the Politics of the Past	5
HIS 120	W.E.B. Du Bois	5
HIS 121A	African American History to 1877	5
HIS 121B	African American History: 1877 to the Present	5
HIS 122A	Jazz and United States Cultural History, 1900-1945	5
HIS 122B	Jazz and United States Cultural History, 1945 to the Present	5
HIS 123	Immigrants and Immigration in U.S. History	5
HIS 125	California History	5
HIS 125A	Indigenous Histories of California	5
HIS 128	Chicana/Chicano History	5
HIS 145	Gender, Colonialism, and Third-World Feminisms	5
HIS 151A	Medicine and the Body in the Colonial World	5
HIS 158A	The Escapes of David George: Biographical Research on Slavery and Early America	5
HIS 190D	Asian and Latino Immigration Since 1875	5
HIS 190Y	The Atlantic Slave Trade	5
HIS 194I	U.S. Bases and Social Movements in Asia	5
HISC 117 /CRES 117	Making the Refugee Century: Non-Citizens and Modernity	5
LIT 102	Translation Theory	5
LIT 121L	Green Ache: Ecopoetics, Race, and Material	5
LIT 125H	Modern Arabic Novel	5
LIT 133H	Haunted by the Forgotten War: Literature and Film of the Korean War	5
LIT 134A	Caribbean Literature	5
LIT 135F	Empire and After in the Anglophone Novel	5
LIT 135G	Postcolonial Writing	5
LIT 138B	Regions in American Literature	5
LIT 145A	Colonial American Literatures	5
LIT 146D	Nineteenth-Century American Fiction	5
LIT 147A	Twain, Slavery, and the Literary Imagination	5
LIT 149B	Contemporary American Literature	5
LIT 149E	Modern Fiction and Poetry	5
LIT 160E	Theorizing Race and Comics	5
LIT 160K	Race, Labor, and Migration	5
LIT 161A	African American Literature	5
LIT 161B	African American Women Writers	5
LIT 162A	Asian American Literature	5
LIT 163A	American Indian Literature	5
LIT 164A	Jewish Travel Narratives	5
LIT 164D	Jewish Diaspora, Ethnicity, and Urban Life	5
LIT 164J	Jewish Writers and the American City	5
LIT 165B	Latino Fictions of the Americas	5
LIT 169A	White Flow(n): Race, Gender, and Material	5
LIT 182I	Littérature d'expression française hors de France	5
LIT 183P	Fremdenangst: Ausländerfeindlichkeit in der deutschen Literatur und Kultur	5
LIT 189F	Literaturas Latinas en los Estados Unidos: en inglés, español y Spanglish	5
LIT 189U	Modernidad y literatura: El Boom de la novela latinoamericana	5
LIT 189V	Andean Indigenismo	5
LIT 190Y	Topics in Jewish Literature and Culture	5

Social Sciences

ANTH 110Q /CRES 110Q/FMST 110Q	Queer Sexuality in Black Popular Culture	5
ANTH 130O	Native Feminisms, Gender, and Settler Colonialism	5
ANTH 131	Gender in Cross-Cultural Context	5
ANTH 140 /CRES 140	The Body in Rain: Environmental and Medical Intersections	5
ANTH 149	Anthropology of Activism	5
ANTH 158	Feminist Ethnographies	5
ANTH 187	Cultural Heritage in Colonial Contexts	5
ANTH 196J	Imagining America	5
CMMU 101	Communities, Social Movements, and the Third Sector	5
CMMU 163	Health Care Inequalities	5
ECON 128 /LGST 128	Poverty and Public Policy	5
EDUC 104	Ethical Issues and Teaching	5
EDUC 125	Multicultural Children's Literature for Elementary Classrooms	5
EDUC 128	Immigrants and Education	5
EDUC 141	Bilingualism and Schooling	5
EDUC 160	Issues in Educational Reform	5
EDUC 164	Urban Education	5
EDUC 173	Seminar in Critical Pedagogy	5
EDUC 177	Teaching Linguistically Diverse Students	5
EDUC 181	Race, Class, and Culture in Education	5
LALS 112	Immigration and Assimilation	5
LALS 128 /OAKS 128	Latino Media in the U.S	5
LALS 131	Latino Literatures: Assimilation and Assimilability	5
LALS 143	Race and Ethnicity	5
LALS 144	Mexicana/Chicana Histories	5
LGST 111B /POLI 111B	Civil Liberties	5
LGST 135	Native Peoples Law	5
POLI 110 /LGST 110	Law and Social Issues	5
PSYC 153	The Psychology of Poverty and Social Class	5
PSYC 155	Social-Community Psychology in Practice	5
PSYC 159H	Community-Based Interventions	5
PSYC 159I	Psychology of Immigration	5
SOCY 120	Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Sexuality and Cultural Politics	5
SOCY 121	Sociology of Health and Medicine	5
SOCY 126	Sex and Sexuality as Social Practice and Representation	5
SOCY 128C /LGST 128C	Social History of Democracy, Anarchism, and Indigenism	5
SOCY 128I /LGST 128I	Race and Law	5
SOCY 132	Sociology of Science and Technology	5
SOCY 133	Currents in African American Cultural Politics	5
SOCY 139T	Community-Engaged Research Practicum	5
SOCY 145	Sociology of Masculinities	5
SOCY 148	Educational Inequality	5
SOCY 152	Body and Society	5
SOCY 156	U.S. Latinx Identities: Centers and Margins	5
SOCY 168	Social Justice	5
SOCY 169	Social Inequality	5
SOCY 170	Ethnicity and Race	5
SOCY 170P	The Political Economy of Race	5
SOCY 171	Exploring Global Inequality	5
SOCY 172	Sociology of Social Movements	5
SOCY 173X	Water and Sanitation Justice	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

HAVC 110	Visual Cultures of West Africa	5
HAVC 111	Visual Cultures of Central Africa	5
HAVC 115	Gender in African Visual Culture	5
HAVC 116	African Architecture	5
HAVC 117	Contemporary Art of Africa	5
HAVC 118	Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora	5
HAVC 119	Arts and Politics of African Urban Space	5
HAVC 123A	Modernity and the Arts of India	5
HAVC 124B	History of Photography in Southeast Asia	5
HAVC 162A	Advanced Studies in Early Indigenous American Visual Culture: The Ancient Maya	5
HAVC 163	The Native in Colonial Spanish America	5
HAVC 170	Art of the Body in Oceania	5
HAVC 172	Textile Traditions of Oceania	5
HAVC 179	Topics in Oceanic Visual Culture	5
HAVC 190O	Berlin: History and the Built Environment	5
HAVC 190W	Art and Culture Contact in Oceania	5
HAVC 190X	Art and Identity in Oceania	5

Division of the Humanities

CRES 116	Race and the Pacific: U.S. and Japanese Empires in Comparative Perspective	5
FMST 112 /POLI 112	Women and the Law	5
FMST 115	Gender, Sexuality, and Transnational Migration Across the Americas	5
HIS 101C	Oceans in World History	5
HIS 106A	Vietnam War Memories	5
HIS 110A	Colonial America, 1500-1750	5
HIS 116	Slavery Across the Americas	5
HIS 124	American Empire	5
HIS 126	From Indigenous Colonial Borderlands to the U.S.-Mexico Border	5
HIS 130	History of Modern Cuba	5
HIS 131	Women in Colonial Latin America	5
HIS 134A	Colonial Mexico	5
HIS 134B	History of Mexico, 1850 to Present	5
HIS 137A	Africa to 1800	5
HIS 137B	Africa from 1800 to the Present	5
HIS 137C	African Cinema	5
HIS 140D	Recent Chinese History	5
HIS 150C	Inventing Modern Japan: The State and the People	5
HIS 150E	History and Memory in the Okinawan Islands	5
HIS 154	Post-Colonial North Africa	5
HIS 155	History of Modern Israel	5
HIS 156	Interrogating Politics in the Post-Colonial Middle East	5
HIS 157	The Ottoman Empire	5
HIS 158C /ANTH 179	Slavery in the Atlantic World: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives	5
HIS 166	Northern Ireland: Communities in Conflict	5
HIS 170C	From the Trenches to the Casbah: France and its Empire in the 20th Century	5
HIS 177A	Slaves, Soldiers, and Scientists: History of the Tropics	5
HIS 178E	Modern Jewish Intellectual History	5
HIS 181B	Africa and Britain in an Imperial World	5
HIS 184B	Racism and Antiracism in Europe: From 1870 to the Present	5
HIS 185I	Latin American Jewish History in the Modern Period	5
HIS 185J	The Modern Jewish Experience	5
HIS 190A	Slavery and Race in Latin America	5
HIS 190B	Race and the Nation in Latin America	5
HIS 190N	Topics in African History	5
HIS 190X	History of the Atlantic World, 1492-1824	5
HIS 194T	Worlds of Labor in Asia	5
HIS 194U	The Cold War and East Asia	5
HIS 196N	Eastern European Jewish Social History	5
LIT 131C	Worldings	5
LIT 133F	Pacific Rim Discourse	5
LIT 133G	The Nuclear Pacific	5
LIT 133I	Global Japan: Literatures of the Japanese Diaspora	5
LIT 135A	Topics in African Literature	5
LIT 137A	Global Cities	5
LIT 138A	Culture and Nation	5
LIT 149F	Contemporary Mexican Narrative	5
LIT 155A	Cinema and Subjectivity	5
LIT 155E	Cinema and Social Change in Latin America	5
LIT 160I	Race, Militarism, and Empire in Asia and the Pacific	5
LIT 160J	Exile, Diaspora, Migration	5
LIT 162B	Literature of the Asian Diaspora	5
LIT 164C	Global Jewish Writing	5
LIT 164G	Literature and the Holocaust	5
LIT 164H	Jewish Writers and the European City	5
LIT 165A	Chicano/Mexicano Geographies	5
LIT 165C	Mesoamerican Indigenous/Indigenista Literature	5
LIT 168A	The Culture of Islamic Law	5
LIT 189A	De la conquista a Sor Juana	5
LIT 189E	Cuba	5
LIT 189H	La Globalizacion en/del Cine Latin/o Americano	5
LIT 189L	Poesía latinoamericana	5
LIT 189M	Prosa contemporánea hispanoamericana	5
LIT 189N	Latinoamericano testimonio	5
LIT 189O	El Cuento Hispanoamericano: Variedades esteticas de la literatura breve en America Latina	5
LIT 189P	Las mujeres en la literatura latinoamericana	5
LIT 189Q	Ficción y marginalidad	5
LIT 189S	La cultura popular en la narrativa latinoamericana	5
LIT 189T	Historia de la lectura y los lectores: Recepcion y consumo cultural en el mundo Latino Americano	5
LIT 190O	Studies in Slavery, Race, and Nation in the Americas	5

Division of the Social Sciences

ANTH 110O /HIS 181A	Postcolonial Britain and France	5
ANTH 110P	India and Indian Diaspora through Film	5
ANTH 129	Beyond Borders: Other Globalizations and Histories of Interconnection	5
ANTH 130A	Anthropology of Africa.	5
ANTH 130C	Politics and Culture in China	5
ANTH 130F /CRES 130	Blackness In Motion: Anthology of the African Diasporas	5
ANTH 130I	Cultures of India	5
ANTH 130L	Ethnographies of Latin America	5
ANTH 130T	Religion and Politics in the Muslim World	5
ANTH 159	Race and Anthropology	5
ANTH 194X	Women in Politics: A Third World Perspective	5
CMMU 145	Global Capitalism: a History of the Present	5
EDUC 170	East Asian Schooling and Immigration	5
EDUC 171	South and Southeast Asian Schooling and Immigration	5
LALS 100	Concepts and Theories in Latin American and Latina/o Studies	5
LALS 115	Mexico-United States Migration	5
LALS 127	Genero, Nacion Y Modernidad En El Cine	5
LALS 145	Grassroots Social Change in Latin America	5
LALS 150	Afro-Latinos/as: Social, Cultural, and Political Dimensions	5
LALS 152	Consumer Cultures Between the Americas	5
LALS 165	Contemporary Peru	5
LALS 170	Indigenous Struggles in the Americas	5
LALS 171	Brazil in Black and White	5
LALS 172	Visualizing Human Rights	5
LALS 175	Migration, Gender, and Health	5
LALS 178	Gender, Transnationalism, and Globalization	5
LALS 180	Borders: Real and Imagined	5
LALS 194H	Central America and the United States	5
POLI 140C	Latin American Politics	5
SOCY 128 /LGST 126	Law and Politics in Contemporary Japan and East Asian Societies	5
SOCY 128M /LGST 128M	International Law and Global Justice	5

The Colleges

CLTE 135	Apprenticeship in Community Engaged Research	5
CLTE 136	Methodologies of Critical Praxis	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 the Comprehensive Requirement (see below).

Comprehensive Requirement

The comprehensive requirement is fulfilled by completing a senior seminar from the CRES 190 series, or one of the other senior seminars listed below. CRES 190 series courses in the current General Catalog are also listed below; any CRES 190 series course that is listed in a subsequent General Catalog will also satisfy the comprehensive requirement.

Prerequisites for the CRES 190 series include CRES 10 and CRES 100 and satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing and Composition requirements. Senior seminars outside of CRES may have additional enrollment restrictions or prerequisites.

CRES 190A /FMST 194S	Critical Race Feminisms	5
CRES 190B	Critical Migration Studies	5
CRES 190P	Trans of Color Movements in Media, Art and Performance	5
CRES 190S	From Slavery to Precarity: Race, Logistics and Globalization	5
CRES 190T	The War on Terror: Imperialism Past and Present	5
FMST 194K /CRES 190K	Black Diaspora	5
FMST 194L /CRES 190L	Comparative Settler Colonial Studies	5
FMST 194M /CRES 190M	Empire and Sexuality	5
FMST 194O /CRES 190O	The Politics of Gender and Human Rights	5
FMST 194Q /CRES 190Q	Queer Diasporas	5
FMST 194U /CRES 190U	Touring War and Empire	5
FMST 194V /CRES 190V	Marxism and Feminism	5
ANTH 196G /CRES 190G	Queer Worlds: Sexuality, Intimacy and Power in Contemporary Ethnography	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