Skip to main content

Council for Race & Ethnic Studies

About the Council

 

Background & Rationale

The over-arching goal of this initiative is to create a new administrative structure, a Council, to support further growth and convergence between existing academic units-initially Latinx Studies and Asian American Studies - which together offer a strong base for an approach to American Studies that emphasizes intersectionality and intercultural meetings. By introducing a council as an administrative unit that can serve as the full academic home for both tenure-line and teaching-track faculty (i.e., one that is on an equal footing with departments), we expect to create the space in which innovative teaching and research can flourish without the persistent instability and constraints imposed by the current department centric structure.

More Info

Programming

 

April 29 @ 12:30 PM

In her talk, “Latina History is Chicago History,” Diana Solís (She/They) will discuss her work as a documentary photographer and community organizer in Chicago during the late 1970s with Mujeres Latinas en Accíon (MLEA). Solís will delve into the making of the 1979 Festival de Mujeres, one of the first and only Latina Feminist Street Festivals in the city. The festival was sponsored by Mujeres Latinas en Acción and co-organized by Diane Avila, MLEA health coordinator, and Solís.

Saturday, April 27

Save the Date: Hosted by Northwestern's Nave and Indigenous Student Alliance the third Annual Pow Wow will take place on Saturday, April 27 at Welsh Ryan Arena. For more information, contact: NAISAPOWWOW@gmail.com.

April 15 @ 12:00 PM

Join us for a conversation with Authors of How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement Against Imprisonment, Rachel Herzing & Justin Piché. An incisive guide to abolitionist strategy, and a love letter to the movement that made this moment possible. Drawing on interviews with organizers and activists in Canada and the US, Herzing and Piché provide a collective reconstruction of what the grassroots movement to abolish prisons is, what initiatives it has launched, how it organizes itself, and how its protagonists build the day-to-day practice of politics. 

Saturday & Sunday, April 13 - 14

a two-day conference that reflects on the origin and legacies of the world’s largest transnational adoption program seventy years after its inception. Bringing together scholars, activists, adopted individuals, first families, journalists, and filmmakers, it offers new perspectives that challenge and expand our understanding of adoption’s beginnings in the context of war and militarism, while exploring present-day consequences of South Korea’s industrialized adoption practices on adopted Koreans and their first families.

More Info

Saturday, April 13 from 6-8PM

Special presentation and conversation with filmmaker Jota Mun, director of the forthcoming documentary, Between Goodbyes, film participant and producer Mieke Murkes, who was reunited with her Korean parents years after she was adopted by a Dutch family. Introduced by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem. Moderated by Viola Bao, Northwestern University.

View Trailer

Monday, April 8 from 6-8PM

The Department of Performance Studies and Council on Race and Ethnic Studies invite you to a workshop with artist and composer Samita Sinha and scholar Amber Musser on attunement. Asking how to be with others and how to be with yourself, this workshop offers a multi-sensory exploration of extension through practice, conversation, and food. This experiment is offered in conjunction with Samita Sinha's performances of Tremor at the MCA Chicago (April 18th – 20th) and Amber Musser's new book Between Shadows and Noise (Duke UP 2024). Space is limited, so for more information or to RSVP please follow the QR code or email attunementNU@gmail.com. This event is free and open to the public. 



Register Here

Lecture: March 7 @ 5:15 PM

What are the capacities of scent as a medium of sensory worldmaking? This talk brings interdisciplinary work on worldmaking into conversation with the field of sensory studies, and discusses how smell produces more-than-human relations in speculative works by Larissa Lai and Anicka Yi.

February 22 from 2 -3PM

In this talk, Dr. Ferreira da Silva will examine the contemporary art scene through the lens of Brazilian artists whose work critiques colonial, racial, and cisheteropatriarchal power structures. Their criticisms will guide our exploration of the present, leading us to an approach to aesthetics that moves beyond purely descriptive analyses or conceptually-driven interpretations. Instead, we will delve into the artworks and artistic practices themselves. By focusing on form, materials, and any accompanying statements (written, sonic, or visual), we will consider the artists' intentions and their reflections on the contemporary art scene and the work of their peers.

Race and Ethnic Studies owes much of its origin to anti-racist and anti-colonial movements that transpired outside of the university. It was intended as a political education component of those struggles that would use the space and resources of colleges and universities to refine how systemic oppression was understood; to de-subjugate knowledge from the dominion of Eurocolonial disciplines or thought; to create new strategies of anti-racist activism; to train new generations of committed social justice leaders, and to generate visions of other possible worlds.

More Information

MEET THE 2023 - 2024 CRES FELLOWS COHORT

As a collaboration between the Asian American Studies (AASP) and Latina and Latino Studies Programs (LLSP) to advance the interdisciplinary study of Race at the University, CRES supports undergraduate, graduate, and faculty fellows.
Meet the Fellows

CRES Highlights

 

My Darling Billy

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team remains the most highly decorated combat unit in U.S. military history for its size and length of service. The 442nd was composed of Japanese Americans who were segregated from the rest of the Army and mainly assigned to the European theater during World War II. Many articles and stories have been written about their heroism. However, the personal relations between the 442nd and the European people has largely been untold. This project presents an opportunity to explore those relationships through archival research. 

​“My Darling Billy” is a project, which seeks to open that window. With the discovery of over 50 letters written from a young French girl to a 442nd RCT corporal, you get a glimpse. A romance develops between Billy Iino (William T. Iino) and Jany Lore with thoughts of marriage. However, because of anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S. combined with the racist hostility toward Japanese Americans that led to their lock-up in concentration camps in 1942, Bill decides marriage could never take place.
More Info

Asian American, Latino and Latina Studies programs continue to push for departmentalization status

Source: The Daily Northwestern

The Associated Student Government passed legislation in January supporting departmentalization status for the Latina and Latino Studies and Asian American Studies programs. 

The resolution was the result of years of advocacy largely driven by student efforts.

More Info

Inhuman Figures, A film essay by Michelle N. Huang and CA Davis

Watch CRES Prof. Michelle N. Huang & CA Davis film essay, Inhuman Figures which excavates three popular science-fictional archetypes—the robot, clone, and alien—to reveal how imagined futures are produced from a long history of treating Asian Americans as tireless workers, indistinguishable copies, and forever foreigners.

Watch Film

Tastes Like War, a conversation with author Grace M. Cho

On Thursday, February 24th, Asian American Studies Northwestern and CRES hosted a conversation with Author Grace M. Cho, and panelists Mia Charlene White and Yuri Doolan on Tastes Like War, Korean diaspora, U.S. militarism, and family histories. Many thanks to them for a rich discussion! The conversation was recorded and we would like to share the recording with you here!

View Conversation

Connect with CRES

 

Join Our Listserv

 
Sign up for our newsletter and emails about events and programs.

Sign up Here

Upcoming Events

 

There are no upcoming events at this time

All Events

News

 
Afro-Latino politicians could bridge the African American-Latino divide

Piece in The Washington Post by CRES Fellow, Michelle Bueno Vasquez. In the U.S., Dominicans are the Hispanic group with the largest Black population. Many are pressured to identify as either Black or Latino, not both.

More News