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Week 1 · Module overview

Week 1 — What Ethnic Studies Is

Introduction to Ethnic Studies Free sample edition

Why this matters

A nursing student filling in an intake form and a future teacher hearing a family's moving story at a school event both meet the same questions: who made this record, whom did it touch, and what does my own position let me see?

In plain language

This week is about a field of study and the habits it asks you to build. Ethnic studies looks at how ideas about race and ethnicity were made, how people have lived with them, and how people have pushed back. It began with student strikes in 1968 and 1969, when students demanded to study their own communities' histories. Its method is to ask the four questions of any rule or record: who made it, whom it served, whom it affected, and how the people affected answered. You will also meet positionality — the way your own background shapes what you notice — and a small archive — a collection of first-person accounts this course returns to all term.

  • This week: what the field is, where it came from, its four core fields, its questions, positionality, and the archive.
  • How they connect: this is the foundation; every later week uses these tools.
  • Where we're going next: Week 2, Core Concepts: Race, Ethnicity, and Racialization.

Focus

What does ethnic studies study, and how does it read a rule or a record?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] place the field's origins in the 1968–1969 strikes
  • [ ] match the four demanded departments to the four core fields
  • [ ] ask the four questions of a rule and give a one-sentence reading
  • [ ] name your positionality without treating it as a disqualifying bias

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 1 (~45–55 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
  2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
  3. Work the practice set (15–25 minutes).
  4. Do the Community History Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
  5. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: walk one archive rule with the four questions and say what it leaves out.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

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