Cluster focus

This cluster was created in response to a set of proposals from various ethnic studies programs. The purpose of the initiative is to broaden the scope of ethnic studies and to enhance the interdisciplinary scholarship of the field. The cluster builds upon existing strengths in four major ethnic studies units: Afro-American Studies, American-Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, and Chican@ and Latin@ Studies. The cluster emphasizes and enhances interdisciplinary study and explores questions of diversity and race relations in the United States, with special interests in comparative race and nationalisms, migration and diaspora, sovereignty, cultural studies, human rights, family studies and colonial/postcolonial studies. Fifteen cluster and affiliated faculty members form an interdisciplinary intellectual home for those interested in ethnic studies and help to foster collaborations among different areas of study. In addition, the cluster and affiliated faculty in the Ethnic Studies Cluster contribute important new perspectives about race and ethnicity to academic departments.

Cluster accomplishments

  • Ethnic Studies Cluster faculty have written or co-edited 18 books on topics related to the study of race and ethnicity. In addition, cluster faculty have written a wide array of academic articles published in leading journals, including the Radical History Review, Hispanic American Historical Review, American History and Culture Research Journal, Pacific Historical Review, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Ethnohistory, the Asian Law Journal, Western Historical Review and the American Indian Quarterly.
  • Faculty members have contributed to numerous new courses, such as Women in Ethnic American Literature, Introduction to the Literature of Native America (with an enrollment of 350 students); Comparative Race and Nationalisms; Comparative and Transnational Working-Class Cultures; and Race, Class, and Colonialism in the Caribbean. Cluster faculty have also enhanced teaching by adding new perspectives and integrating race, class, gender and ethnicity into existing courses.
  • Cluster members have received numerous awards and fellowships for teaching and research excellence, including the Bancroft Prize, the Fredrick Jackson Turner Prize, the Turrentine Jackson Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Program and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.
  • Cluster faculty have hosted and co-hosted national conferences, including a recent conference on race relations, Looking Toward the Future: Discrimination and Prejudice in the 21st Century,  in 2006, and the Wisconsin Labor Society Conference, in 2007.
  • The cluster plans to host a series of symposia in 2007-08 and a conference the following year.

Cluster structure

The cluster has met once each semester since its formation in spring 2005, and established an advisory committee in spring 2006. Its goal is to provide a transnational and comparative intellectual community through research, teaching, and collaboration.

Cluster coordinator, faculty and lead dean

Cluster Coordinator

Cluster Faculty

Affiliated Faculty

Lead Dean