Submit a Course for the Minor

Minor In Ethnic Studies Course Submission Guidelines

The Ethnic Studies Minor at Baylor is an interdisciplinary minor focused on the study of various racial and ethnic histories, cultures, vernaculars, and epistemologies as sites of inquiry including but not limited to “Black studies, African American studies, Native American studies, Indigenous studies, Chicano/a studies, Puerto Rican studies, Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies, and Latino/a studies” (Elia et al. 1).

Courses in the Ethnic Studies minor will provide social, historical and/or cultural contexts to help students in the minor understand the kinds of rhetorical arguments (e.g., textual, oral, aural, visual, statistical, digital, etc.)  that historically make racially and ethnically marginalized racial and ethnic people visibly invisible, thereby, creating a sense of unbelonging in many spaces they occupy, including campus communities. The kinds of invisibility they experience leads to inequity materially, socially, and psychologically. 

Courses in the Ethnic Studies minor also investigates racial and ethnic groups as a focus of inquiry including how conceptions of race and ethnicity intersect with other social identity categories including class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability. 

Courses that have been approved for the minor can be found at our website: interdisciplinaryprograms.artsandsciences.baylor.edu.

As we think about the collective curricular goals of the Ethnic Studies minor, see below a list of guiding principles that animate our pedagogical practices. 

1. Introduces students to the foundational language, concepts, and methods for the study of race and ethnicity. 

2. Understands and teaches race to be a social construct. 

3. Defines racism—on individual and systemic levels—as the combination of racial prejudice and even power dynamics. 

4. Interrogates racism’s affects and influences on our intra-and interpersonal relationships, how racism navigates society, and our differing receptions, perceptions, accesses, and opportunities.  

5. Discusses how, through a social construct, race has real material impacts in/on our internal and personal lives, local communities, and the greater U.S. society (as well as the global stage). 

 This course includes three or more of the criteria listed below:

1.  Examines various US racial and ethnic histories, cultures, vernaculars, and epistemologies as sites of inquiry, including but not limited to those that stem from and represent Asian American and Pacific Islander, Black/African American, Latine/x Native/Indigenous American identity groups.
2.  Expects instructors of record to include underrepresented scholar-teachers on required reading lists and course bibliographies.
3.  Encourages students to recognize, reflect upon, and analyze how race and power dynamics impact access(es) (e.g. upward mobility, well-being, etc.) and lived experience(s).  
4.  Asks students to consider how their lived experience as a racialized individual impacts their relationship(s) with and understanding of themselves and others.
5. Empowers students to understand and expand their capacity to—individually and collectively—be agents of positive social change. 
   1. 30% of the course requirements are aligned with the above criteria.

Course consideration must be submitted to the Ethnic Studies Advisory Board by either the instructor of record, Department Chair, or Dean.

To submit a course for approval, please send the syllabus and any other materials you would like us to review to ethnic_studies@baylor.edu.