The Department of Ethnic Studies at UCSD offers an innovative vision of the post-colonial world and its peoples. Our faculty and students focus on the fundamental theoretical and political questions regarding the critical conceptualization of social categories, particularly race, indigeneity, culture, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and nation. We are committed to rethinking these issues in a comparative, relational, and multidisciplinary fashion in order to interrogate questions of power and inequality. We provide alternative epistemologies for the study of the histories, languages, and cultures of racialized and indigenous populations in the U.S. and globally in a way that produces new knowledges for the academy and the broader public. The Department of Ethnic Studies is a key center of empirical and theoretically-based research, outstanding teaching, and creative collaborations that promote social justice.

We offer a course of study designed to train advanced researchers to do interdisciplinary, original discovery scholarship in keeping with our efforts to influence and improve the quality of scholarship and teaching about race and ethnicity at institutions of higher learning in the United States and around the world. We believe that a demanding, rigorous, and comprehensive graduate curriculum promoting expertise in analytic, comparative, and interdisciplinary studies of race and ethnicity will position our graduates to play an important role in our field in the years ahead.

As scholars from a variety of disciplines have raised fundamental questions about the nature of knowledge, about the adequacy of existing scholarly conventions and paradigms, and about the relationships between the things we study and the tools we use in our research, new fields of study organized around objects of inquiry rather than around a single disciplinary methodology have emerged. Ethnic Studies owes its existence to the development of interdisciplinary trends within disciplines (social history, new historicist literary studies, interpretive ethnography in anthropology, historical sociology, etc.) as well as to the growing dialogue across disciplines — especially within the humanities and social sciences.

Our emphasis on studying ethnic groups in relation to one another and to broader social and cultural forces gives our research and our curriculum its distinctive identity. Our primary focus on race and ethnicity encourages us to engage with social theories about identity and power. In addition, while existing social science disciplines produce excellent work on ethnic issues, we offer an interdisciplinary setting where the primary emphasis is on theorizing race and ethnicity.

Program of Study

Students are required to enroll on a full-time basis (i.e., to carry a minimum enrollment of twelve units of graduate-level courses each quarter) and to maintain a grade point average of 3.2 or better. As part of our Ph.D. program, students obtain an M.A. degree after successfully completing fifty-four units of required coursework, a master’s thesis, and defense. Note: The Ethnic Studies Department plans to modify the first- and second-year course requirements in Fall, 2009.

Core Curriculum Requirements

1. Ethnic Studies 200 A-B-C, Core Seminar: All graduate students will be required to take the introductory three-quarter core seminar during the first year in the program. This course covers the genealogy of critical racial and ethnic studies (its antecedents and development as a distinct and interdisciplinary method of inquiry); interdisciplinarity and knowledge production in Ethnic Studies; and research in Ethnic Studies (Pro Seminar).
2. Ethnic Studies 230, Departmental Colloquium: This colloquium is a one-unit course and must be taken for a total of six quarters. In Ethnic Studies 230, department faculty and visiting lecturers make presentations about research in progress in our field. All graduate students will be required to take ETHN 230 during the first two years in the program.
3. Ethnic Studies 240, 241, and 242 Research Methods Series: All graduate students will be required to take the tree-quarter core research methods course (four units each, twelve units total) during their first year in the program: ETHN 240, Historical Methods and ARchives; ETHN 241, Cultural Studies and Cultural Production; and ETHN 242, Qualitative Methods / Ethnography.
4. Ethnic Studies 290 A-B, Master’s Thesis Preparation: All graduate students are required to write a Master’s thesis as part of the requirements for the Master of Arts in Ethnic Studies. Students should enroll in thesis preparation courses in the Fall and Spring quarters of the second year of graduate studies.

All doctoral candidates must satisfy the department’s graduate committee that they have adequate linguistic competence in one foreign language if it is relevant to their area of research. When students complete all the core requirements and have taken five four-unit elective courses in appropriate areas of disciplines, they are eligible to take the qualifying examination for the Ph.D. degree. The exam is both written and oral; it consists of two parts. Part One tests the student’s basic competence and knowledge of ethnic studies scholarship; Part Two of the examination requires the submission of a dissertation prospectus. Once students pass the qualifying exam, they may begin dissertation research. Once the committee members are substantially satisfied with the written work, the student, in consultation with the committee, schedules the oral defense of the dissertation; only after a successful defense is the student eligible to receive the Ph.D. degree.

Application & Admission

New students are admitted in the fall quarter of each academic year. January 15 is the application deadline for admission the following fall. UCSD Official Application for Admission and Awards and the application fee are submitted through the online application form available at: http://graduateapp.ucsd.edu/

A complete application for admission includes:

1. The Statement of Purpose (no more than 2500 words) submitted through the online application
2. At least three letters of recommendation submitted through the online application (we will accept paper copies mailed to the Ethnic Studies Department address (see below) if a recommender is not able to submit his/her letter through the online application).
3. Official GRE test scores: The UCSD school code is 4836; the correct department code is 2299 (other Social Science)
4. One set of official transcripts from each institution attended after high school should be sent to the Ethnic Studies Deparment address (see below).
5. At least one writing sample (e.g., term papers) of no more than 30 pages is required (can be submitted electronically or mailed to department address; please contact the Ethnic Studies Department for electronic submission instructions).
6. Eligible students are encouraged to complete the San Diego Fellowship Statement through the online application. Information about the fellowship is available at: http://ogs.ucsd.edu/fellowships/sd_fellowship/index.htm
7. International applicants must submit official TOEFL scores (Test of English as a Foreign Language)

Additional information regarding application requirements is available at this link: http://ogs.ucsd.edu/admissions/application/appproc.htm

• Information about the application fee waiver is available at this link: http://ogs.ucsd.edu/admissions/application/waiver/
  
  
• For information about open house events (usually in the middle of fall quarter of each year), to arrange a visit to the department, or for questions about the UCSD Ethnic Studies Department, please send e-mail to ethnicstudiesphd@ucsd.edu
  
  
• Ethnic Studies Department Contact Information: Mailing Address:
  UC San Diego Ethnic Studies Department, 0522
  9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0522
• Telephone: (858) 534-3276
• Fax: (858) 534-8194
• Web: http://ethnicstudies.ucsd.edu
• email: ethnicstudiesphd@ucsd.edu
• UCSD Graduate Admission Application