Color-Line to Borderlands: The Matrix of American Ethnic Studies

by Butler, Johnnella E.

• ISBN13: 9780295980911
• ISBN10: 0295980915
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr

Summary

"Ethnic Studies...has drawn higher education, usually kicking and screaming, into the borderlands of scholarship, pedagogy, faculty collegiality, and institutional development," as Johnnella E. Butler writes in her Introduction. This collection of lively and insightful essays, with contributions from some of the most prominent scholars in Ethnic Studies today, explores varying approaches, multiple methodologies, and contrasting perspectives within the field. Essays trace the historical development of Ethnic Studies, its place in universities and the curriculum, and new directions in contemporary scholarship. The legitimation of the field, the need for institutional support, and the changing relations between academic scholarship and community activism are also discussed.The institutional structure of Ethnic Studies continues to be affected largely by national, regional, and local attitudes and events, and Ronald Takaki's essay explores the "contested terrains" of these continuing culture wars. Manning Marable delves into theoretical aspects of writing about race and ethnicity, while John C. Walter surveys the influence of African American history on U.S. history textbooks. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn and Craig Howe explain why American Indian Studies does not fit into the Ethnic Studies model, and Lauro Flores traces the historical development of Chicano/a Studies, forged from the student and community activism of the late 1960s.As Ethnic Studies is simultaneously discipline-based and interdisciplinary, self-containing and overlapping, this volume captures that characteristic as contributors raise questions that traditional disciplines ignore. Other essays include Lane Ryo Hirabayashi and Marilyn Alquizola on the gulf between postmodernism and political and institutional realities; Rhett Jones on the evolution of Africana Studies; and T. V. Reed on the trajectories of Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies and their relations with marginalised communities. Shirley Hune and Evelyn Hu-DeHart each make a case for the separation of Asian American Studies from Asian Studies, while Edna Acosta-Belen argues for a hemispheric approach to Latin American and U.S. Latino/a Studies. Judith Newton rounds out the volume by offering through cultural studies bridges to the 21st century.Johnnella E. Butler is associate dean of the Graduate School, professor of American Ethnic Studies, and adjunct professor of Women's Studies and English at the University of Washington. She has published extensively in the field ofmulticultural studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Color-Line to Borderlands	xi
Johnnella E. Butler
I Ethnic Studies as a Matrix: Moving from Color-Line to Borderlands
Multiculturalism: Battleground or Meeting Ground?	3	(15)
Ronald Takaki
Ethnic Studies as a Matrix for the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Common Good	18	(24)
Johnnella E. Butler
The Problematics of Ethnic Studies	42	(23)
Manning Marable
The Influence of African American History on U.S. History Survey Textbooks since the 1970s	65	(38)
John C. Walter
II Institutional Structure and Knowledge Production
Ethnic Studies in U.S. Higher Education: The State of the Discipline	103	(10)
Evelyn Hu-DeHart
From Ideology to Institution: The Evolution of Africana Studies	113	(37)
Rhett S. Jones
The Dialectics of Ethnicity in America: A View from American Indian Studies	150	(19)
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
Craig Howe
Whither the Asian American Subject?	169	(34)
Lane Ryo Hirabayashi
Marilyn Caballero Alquizola
Thirty Years of Chicano and Chicana Studies	203	(24)
Lauro H. Flores
III Changing and Emerging Paradigms
Asian American Studies and Asian Studies: Boundaries and Borderlands of Ethnic Studies and Area Studies	227	(13)
Shirley Hune
Reimagining Borders: A Hemispheric Approach to Latin American and U.S. Latina Studies	240	(25)
Edna Acosta-Belen
Bridges to the Twenty-First Century: Making Cultural Studies---and Making it Work	265	(8)
Judith Newton
Heavy Traffic at the Intersections: Ethnic, American, Women's, Queer, and Cultural Studies	273	(20)
T.V. Reed
Contributors	293	(5)
Index	298