Executive Summary
Bowling Green University offers a graduate certificate in ethnic studies, which “explores the ways racial and ethnic identities, social relations, cultures, and geographical spaces have been shaped over time” and focuses “on the institutions and political/economic/social processes that have staged race at the center of the nation’s histories.”
Students are required to take “Theories of Race Relations, Ethnicity, and Multiculturalism.”
Courses
ETHN 6200 – Theories of Race Relations, Ethnicity, and Multiculturalism
The course “provides an advanced introduction to classical theories of race and ethnicity, cultural studies, post colonial studies, critical race theory, and the politics of multiculturalism.
- The course “focuses on questions of racial and ethnic systems of social organization and signification.”
ETHN 6800: Critical Race Theory
The course ETHN 6800: Critical Race Theory includes topics such as critical race theory, “color-blind privilege,” tenets of queer theory, and whiteness.
The course description states that it explores the “most influential ideas, authors, and critics of what is known as ‘Critical Race Theory’ (CRT)” and traces the “intellectual origins of this (or these) ideas; how they interpret the meaning of American history, government, law, and society; what particular methodologies they produce or require; and how these ideas differ from, intersect with, or reinforce other explanations of American racism.”
Additional Ethnic Studies Courses
Participants in the program are required to choose four other courses from a list of ten ethnic studies courses.
Previous certificate course offerings include:
- ETHN 6500/WS 6800 – Sexuality, Race, and Nation
- ETHN 6730/ACS 5001- Concepts in CRT: Myth and Reality
- ETHN 6800 5001/WS 6800 5001 – Black Resistance & Black Women
- ETHN 6820 – Applied Ethnic and Gender Studies
- ETHN 6820 501W – Teaching Hard History