"Comparative Race, Ethnicity, and Diaspora in the US," W 2:30-4:25 , Fall 2009. Led by Professor Jigna Desai and Professor Karen Ho

To register for the course, please visit the OneStop course schedule page for GWSS 8997 or ANTH 8810.

Our very notions of native citizen was forged against “aliens ineligible for citizenship,” our ideas of cultural appropriateness were formulated in relation to groups deemed to have “excessive culture” on the one hand and “no culture” in the other, and the designation of some groups as “model minorities” was intended to discipline “not-so-model minorities.” We thus believe that a serious engagement with the heterogeneous and trans-national histories and relationships among communities such as African Americans, Euro-Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans is necessary for contemporary scholarship of race in general, as well as of any particular community or identity. Even research projects that are not explicitly comparative must think through the various subtexts, shadows, and other categories through which or against which their particular foci was constructed. We believe that by interrogating comparative racial formations both across “minority” groups as well as between majority and minority groups, this seminar will strengthen a wide-array of interdisciplinary research that engage with questions of race, privilege, power, identity, intersectionality, citizenship, American culture and history, and diaspora. Within this context, the course will also explore how racial formations are inflected and must be understood as articulated through and mutually constituted by other forms of social difference such as class, ethnicity, citizenship, gender, and sexuality. The theory, concepts, and texts that inform this course will be resolutely interdisciplinary, drawn from feminist and queer studies; anthropology; Ethnic Studies; American Studies; cultural and postcolonial studies; history; sociology; etc.

This class is designed for those who have passed their prelim exams and are beginning or writing their dissertations. Creating a supportive and rigorous environment in which graduate students learn to both expand their conceptual paradigms and assemble the building blocks of writing a dissertation is a central goal of the course. The design of the course is thus two-fold: it will combine both interdisciplinary readings and discussion in comparative race and ethnic studies and peer feedback workshops.

A central theme of the class, then, will be to think through the process and methodology of writing, to develop our writing – both process and the product – in conversation with each other. First, by building an interdisciplinary peer writing community, the seminar will require students to present their research topics and questions in a manner that is understandable to those in other disciplines while learning to make explicit the possibilities and limitations of their own scholarship. Second, we will acknowledge and discuss explicitly the very particular process and form of writing a dissertation, and in doing so, we hope to create an enriched learning experience that seeks to demystify the steps of completing a PhD. For example, graduate students often have difficulty creating structure, managing scope, using time wisely, and maximizing the writing and revising process. We realize that the writing process can be painful, isolating, invigorating, frustrating, and inspiring. Through peer workshops and faculty feedback, the hope is that this class will establish an intellectually engaging environment and tackle the specificities of the dissertation format.

Professor Desai is in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. She is also affiliated with Asian Languages and Literatures, American Studies, and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota. Read more about Professor Desai....

Professor Ho is in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. Read more about Professor Ho....