As Interim Director of the ALANA U. S. Ethnic Studies program, I am pleased to inform the UVM community that we have officially changed our name to the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies program.
In January 2013 Dean Antonio Cepeda-Benito appointed a steering committee to re-visit the design of the ALANA U. S. Ethnic Studies program.* We agreed that the goals of the program are no longer reflected in the term “ALANA,” an acronym meant to represent African American, Asian American, Latino/a American and Native Americans. While a substantial amount of the teaching and scholarship of our core and affiliated faculty focuses on these groups, the name change signals our intention to expand our investigation of racial identity beyond the arbitrary boundaries of American racial categories. In addition, the term ALANA suggests that there are stable, absolute and easily discernable differences between the racial groups each letter represents. But this is not so, and ALANA is ultimately more exclusive than inclusive. For instance, the term ALANA leaves no room for the representation of multi-racial identities, groups that are commanding the attention of an ever-growing body of scholars. Ultimately, changing our name to Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) is demonstration of our ambition to transcend the mechanical classifying paradigms of generations past and announce our affiliation to the much more complex brand of scholarship being conducted on race in the 21st century. In Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, we are less focused on the names of particular groups of people and more the way that race is constructed and the theoretical concepts we use to describe that construction.
The ALANA U. S. Ethnic Studies program was founded on the importance of analyzing race relations in the United States, which is, inarguably, a topic of utmost urgency. However, race and racism in the United States cannot be divorced from the histories, processes and realities of race and racism beyond our borders; the term Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) acknowledges that fact. Fundamentally, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies is not an absolute departure from the original ALANA model but rather the next stage in its evolution. CRES builds on the classic ethnic studies formations to situate us as participants in a growing and vibrant tradition of race studies in which the tools and concepts have shifted to recognize that racial identity cannot be captured by descriptors. Instead, racialization is a process that is ever-changing and radically contingent on history, politics, geography culture and multiple other factors.
We are hosting two events this year that will address the implications of our name change, and speak to some of our goals as a developing program. On October 9, we will welcome Professor Roderick Ferguson, a professor of race and critical theory in the American Studies department at the University of Minnesota. Ferguson’s book, The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference, discusses the degree to which ethnic studies programs are undermined by college diversity requirements. Professor Sandhya Shukla, a professor of American Studies at the University of Virginia and author of India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Postwar America and England, will join us on April 9, 2015. Shukla’s theoretical perspective, grounded in an interdisciplinary approach to the concepts of nation, nationality, race, and ethnicity, resonates with the ambitions of CRES to move beyond a U.S.-centric gaze on race and ethnic identity.
Details of both events are forthcoming. We hope to see you there and look forward to engaging with you as we evolve as a program.
Sincerely,
Emily Bernard
Professor, Department of English
Interim Director, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies program
*The Critical Race and Ethnic Studies steering committee consists of Professors John Gennari (English), Jinny Huh (English), Nikki Khanna (Sociology), Carol Miller (Psychology), Jonah Steinberg (Anthropology), Rashad Shabazz (Geography, Chair), and Emily Bernard (English, ALANA Interim Director and Co-Chair). The proposal to change the name of ALANA U. S. Ethnic Studies to Critical Race and Ethnic Studies was approved by the ALANA and U.S. Ethnic Studies faculty, the College of Arts and Sciences faculty, the UVM Faculty Senate, and the UVM Board of Trustees.