Program Overview
The Department of Ethnic Studies at Santa Ana College is an inter-disciplinary department comprised of faculty from various related disciplines including History, Art History, English, Psychology, and Music.
The AA degree in Ethnic Studies is designed to foster individual cultural identity and cross-cultural communication, develop a consciousness about the American pluralistic society and its origins, and provide basic education regarding professional careers involving intercultural relations in fields such as arts, business education, government, health, law, public relations, and public service. Emphasis will be be on a cultural survey of Native Americans, Asian Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans/Latinos from the Pre-Columbian period to the present and the contributions of these ethnic groups to U.S. society. Enrichment and global perspective will be added to majors such as Art, Anthropology, Child Development, Dance, Education, English, Foreign Language, History, Music, Psychology and Sociology. Completion of the degree program prepares students to pursue a major leading to a baccalaureate degree.
Mission Statement
The Department of Ethnic Studies examines the social and
historical narratives of those seen as non-American. The Anglo, Caucasian, and
WASP ideal of American created a separation where all others encountered and
endured the United States nation-building project, which erased the narratives
of non-Americans. The department's educational principles aspire to expand
student social and political horizons and the critical thinking skills vital in
comprehensively participating in humanity transnationally. We explore how
various kinds of resistance, persistence, liberation struggle, and radical
wisdom confront and transform oppressive conditions and create new social
change possibilities.
The Ethnic Studies program is committed to centralizing
the epistemologies, histories, narratives, and living experiences of
disenfranchised/marginalized First people/Indigenous and those seen as
non-American from the Anglo, Caucasian, and WASP ideal of American to challenge
and critique all structures of despotism, oppression, repression, subjection,
suppression and promote emancipatory, self-determining destinies for all
people. The Ethnic Studies program aspires to present the intersections of
ethnicity, gender, race, and sexuality within the voiced concerns of the four
major groups disproportionately affected in the United States: Native
Americans, African/Black Americans, Asian Americans, and
Chicanas/Chicanos/Latin Americans.
The Department of Ethnic Studies creates course content
based on factual conditions of people of color; we also utilize methodologies
that accentuate the structural dimensions of social, political, and economic
inequalities and struggles used against them. The department dissects the
intersectionality of race, racism, and various forms of institutionalized
violence. Areas of focus include land conquest, state violence, colonialism,
U.S. imperialism, racial genocide, chattel slavery, militarization, forced
assimilation, legalized discrimination, White supremacy, and the rationale of
ethnic/racial domination. The comparative examination of racialization seeks to
expose structures of disparity and privilege.
Courses
- Asian American Studies 101: Introduction to Asian American Studies
- Black Studies 101: Introduction to Black Studies
- Chicano Studies 101: Introduction to Chicano Studies
- Ethnic Studies 101: Introduction to Ethnic Studies
- Ethnic Studies 102: The Borderlands: Cultural Context/Intercultural Relations