Critical Race & Ethnic Studies Major and Minor

A program offering students the opportunity to study Black, Asian American, Indigenous, and Latinx peoples, and develop an interdisciplinary understanding of race and ethnicity.

Program Type Undergraduate Major, Undergraduate Minor
Degrees Offered B.A.
Mode of Study On Campus
Department Interdisciplinary
School May School of Arts & Sciences
Student in class

What Will You Learn in the Critical Race & Ethnic Studies Program?

Those majoring or minoring in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRE), will examine the complexities of racial and ethnic formations and racialized power, both in the United States and in broader transhistorical and transnational contexts.

Students will also study how race and ethnicity intersect with and impact other aspects of identity/axes of power, including gender, gender expression, sexuality, ability, class, religion, and nationality.

They will learn how race and ethnicity are implicated in issues of social justice and how various racial and ethnic minoritized peoples have resisted their marginalization.

What Career Options Are There With with a Critical Race & Ethnic Studies Degree?

The educational experience in CRE will equip students with tools to understand both the spaces of injustice and justice to affirm differences and anchor “a belief in the inherent dignity of each person.”

Students who major in Critical Race & Ethnic Studies program often go on to careers in education, law and counseling. The degree also gives job candidates a competitive advantage in countless other fields, including government, business, social services, and non-profit organizations.

What Makes Stonehill’s Critical Race & Ethnic Studies Program Unique?

With the launch of the major and minor, Stonehill becomes one of the few liberal arts colleges in the United States that offers a comparative ethnic studies major. While various liberal arts colleges offer a Black and Africana Studies major or an American Studies major, we are one of a few that will house a major and minor that facilitates conversations between work in Black Studies, Latinx Studies, Asian American Studies, and Indigenous Studies.

The program is an extension of the College’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Social Justice, which will serve as an invaluable resource to students in the major and minor.

Focus and Parameters of the Critical Race & Ethnic Studies Major

Students who complete a major will:

  • Become familiar with, apply, and differentiate concepts, theories, and debates central to the interdisciplinary study of race and ethnicity
  • Examine histories of racial formations and the exercises of racialized power, in the form of white supremacy and settler colonialism, in the U.S. and beyond
  • Identify and compare resistance movements and the role they play in liberation, community- and nation-building
  • Analyze how race and ethnicity intersect with and impact each other and with gender, gender expression, sexuality, ability, religion, and nationality
  • Recognizing their own assumptions about race, interpersonal racism, and understand how racialized power has impacted their experience
  • Analyze race and ethnicity are implicated in questions of social justice
  • Combine academic learning with practical application through the Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE), internships, and/or co-curricular programming
  • Analyze how race and ethnicity are also managed through desires, pleasures, and world- building
  • Combine academic learning with professional development through presentations at the Stonehill undergraduate conference and association conferences

Student researchers investigate the international popularity of South Korean pop culture in the context of racial solidarity.

Focus and Parameters of the Critical Race & Ethnic Studies Minor

Students who complete a major will:

  • Become familiar with and apply concepts, theories, and debates central to the interdisciplinary study of race and ethnicity
  • Discuss histories of racial formations and the exercises of racialized power, in the form of white supremacy and settler colonialism, in the U.S. and beyond
  • Identify and compare resistance movements and the role they play in liberation, community- and nation-building
  • Describe how race and ethnicity intersect with and impact each other and with some other aspect(s) of identity
  • Recognize their own assumptions about race, interpersonal racism, and identify how racialized power has impacted their experience
  • Combine academic learning with practical application through SURE, internships, and/or co-curricular programming

Sample Courses

Introduction to Critical Race and Ethnic studies

This class is a broad examination of race, power, and resistance through the historical and contemporary examination of Black, Latinx, Asian and Pacific Islander, and Indigenous communities in the United States. The class considers the relation of these communities to whiteness while also exploring the ways communities of color and indigenous communities interact with each other.

Politics of Memory in Ethnic America

Representations of the histories of communities of color in American culture are often incomplete, barely visible, or distorted. We examine Native American experiences, the Japanese American internment, representations of slavery, as well as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the memorialization of 9/11, and the role all of them play in the larger American national imagination.

Freedom and the Just Society

This course will explore questions about the relationship between the individual and society: What gives society authority over the individual? Would we be better off without society? Should we obey all of society’s laws or only those we think are just? What basic rights should people have in society? How could society be more just? How should wealth be distributed?

Partnerships & Special Programs

Stonehill College has developed academic affiliations with colleges and universities that enable our students to augment the degree they earn at Stonehill with graduate and undergraduate degrees that further enhance their opportunities.

Save Money: Earn Two Degrees in as Little as Four Years

The Skyhawk Accelerated Dual Degree allows Stonehill students to earn a bachelor's degree and master's degree from Stonehill College in as little as four years. Eligible students receive early and expedited admission to their graduate program of interest and can begin working toward a master's degree in education, data analytics or marketing. Stonehill students also receive 20% off for remaining graduate tuition through the Skyhawk Rate.

Contact Information

Stanley I. Thangaraj

Stanley I. Thangaraj

James E. Hayden Chair for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, & Social Justice, Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
sthangaraj@stonehill.edu
May 234
Sociology

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