Welcome!

My name is Ryan Goode and I will be your instructor this semester for Ethnic Studies, Space, and Social Justice. I'm so excited to be teaching this brand new course that explores the intersections of Ethnic Studies and Geography. 

In this course we are going to spend a lot of time thinking about the formation of ethnic and racial identities. Did you notice how I italicized the word formation in the last sentence? It's really important! Many times we think of race or ethnicity as something that has always simply existing. Or as an unchanging category. As we will explore in this course...nothing could be further from the truth. Racial and ethnic identities were created for very specific reasons. Much of this course will be devoted to getting us to start thinking about how racial and ethnic identities are created through social, economic, political, historic and spatial processes. I know this might sound a bit confusing right now. But I promise I'm going to break try my best to break it down as simply as possible over the next few modules.

This course is also a GEOGRAPHY course! I know what you're probably thinking. How in the heck do Ethnic Studies and Geography go together? Isn't Geography just memorizing capitals? Well, as you will soon find out....Geography is MUCH more than memorizing capitals (in fact, we don't do any of that in college level Geography courses). Geography is all about exploring the spatial distribution of the social and physical worlds. To make it really simple, we ask a few basic questions: Where is it? Why there? Why does it matter?

So in the context of Ethnic Studies we seek to understand the spatial distribution of racial and ethnic groups. Where are they located? How did they get there? And what is the significance of their location? More on this soon...

Course topics

• Introduction to Ethnic Studies. How are ethnicity, race, and place connected?

• Defining Difference: Identity and Race

• Nationality, Ethnicity, and the Cultural Landscape: Exploring the Indigenous, Spanish, and Anglo Plazas of Nuevo Mexico

• Nationalism, Memory, and Place

• The Geography of Memory: The Civil Rights Movement

• Race, Place, and Bruce's Beach

• The Racialized Geographies of US Migration

• Settler Colonialism and Indigeneity

• Educational Inequity

• Crime and the City

• Urban Displacement and Gentrification