Ithaca College

The Latino/a Studies minor is one of the minors that the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity was mandated to develop through a curricular focus on traditionally marginalized, under-represented, or misrepresented groups in the U.S. The point of such a focus is to prepare students to meet the increasingly complex demands of living in a multiracial, multiethnic, and poly-cultural world. (By Latinos and Latinas we mean U.S.-based “minorities” who are descendants of people in Latin America and whose primary identity formation has occurred as a result of living in the U.S. However, since identities are not insular, our courses explore both sides of the border and the reality/ metaphor of the border itself.)

The courses will cover a broad range of issues, from the historically constructed and contested nature of identity to issues of cultural representation and social justice. Although Ithaca College lags behind other schools in offering a minor in this area, our program is more theoretically innovative than many other comparable programs inasmuch as it will allow students to: * study the Self in relationship to the Other, * use historical and comparative methodologies for developing a contextual understanding of the issues being studied, * combine epistemological /theoretical concerns with an analysis of "real-life" problems as a way to understand the relationship between theory and practice, * develop a critical approach to the processes of knowledge construction; and * explore the linkages between U.S. and global politics, economics, culture, etc. Please visit our Website for more information at https://www.ithaca.edu/cscre/latinostudies/