Research

Our research often includes an element of illuminating the movement of peoples, ideas, and cultures across borders, recognizing that this movement is deeply unequal. We consider the interconnections between different forms of movement (migration, displacement, tourism, etc.) and the different scales of mobility (body, region, nation, local, global, etc.). And we explore how migration is set in motion by current and historical social and environmental forces. 

Our department holds outstanding strengths in the hemispheric study of racial formations, racisms and antiracism, ethnicity, and indigeneity, and these strengths are foundational to our research. We approach ethnic studies with a hemispheric and increasingly global lens, de-centering the US and uncovering how dynamics of ethnic and racial studies travel, change meaning, and are differently powered in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

Much of our research contributes to the transnational analysis of culture. We place emphasis on the ways in which cultural forces and cross-cultural communication and media are contributing to the formation of new transnational imaginaries, along with how these cultural processes are transforming and challenging nation-centric identities and state-centered citizenship.

Our department’s research incorporates a deep understanding of the intersections of power relations based on race, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, class, space, age, gender, and sexuality. Of particular concern are the ways in which various regimes, including slavery, colonialism, nationalism, militarization, white supremacy, extractivism, and neoliberalism, have constituted subjects and citizens, and the ways people and communities negotiate, respond to, and subvert dynamics of power and/or (re)imagine their identities.