The graduate certificate in Indigenous, race, and ethnic studies allows graduate students across campus to develop expertise in areas of indigeneity, racial inequality, and social justice. Graduate students acquire tools to address their own disciplinary research from a transdisciplinary and intersectional perspective and will generate scholarship with greater social impact.
The accomplishment of a certified mastery of work in IRES will enhance each student’s skill set and better position them for the academic or professional job market.
Program Requirements
The graduate certificate in IRES requires 26 credits in courses approved by the IRES graduate director. Graduate students will develop their curriculum plans with the ethnic studies graduate director to best complement individual needs and goals for their graduate studies. Courses not taught by graduate faculty may be approved by the director of graduate studies for the certificate. To earn credit for the certificate, students must take:
- One core course (5 credits)
- One substantive course (5 credits)
- Four elective courses (16-20 credits)
Core Courses
Choose one:
- ES 615 Theoretical Foundations in Ethnic Studies: Theoretical foundations and debates in Indigenous, race, and ethnic studies.
- ES 616 Interdisciplinary Methodologies: Examination of interdisciplinary methodologies in the various fields of IRES, with a focus towards students developing methodological approaches for their own work.
- ES 617 Genealogies of Ethnic Studies: Examines the emergence and evolution of the discipline of ethnic studies, including major intellectual shifts in the field, particularly as they relate to changes in the social science and humanities; and the state of the discipline today.
Substantive Courses
Choose one:
- ES 620: Race, Space, and Power: This course questions the variety of ways that social constructions of race and space are inextricable from one another and constitute, as much as they are constituted by, modern power relations.
- ES 621: Cultural Production: Graduate introduction to the theories and methods utilized within cultural studies scholarship with attention to race, gender, nation, sexuality and indigeneity.
- ES 622: Resistance and Dissent: Surveys historical and contemporary methods people of color have used to subvert and challenge white power and privilege in the United States.
- ES 623: Race and Sexuality: Examines the ways in which race is deeply intertwined with gender and sexuality in the production of racial, gender, and sexual violence since the inception of European settler colonialism in the Americas.
Elective Courses
Choose four elective IRES courses at a 500 or 600 level. Explore our list of commonly taught seminars.
Apply to our Graduate Program
Admission into the graduate certificate program in IRES requires current standing in any University of Oregon MA or PhD program and an approved application with a prospective plan of study.