Newsletter

A Message from the Chair

This year–indeed, the last few years–our world has often felt like all too much. Attacks on our academic fields have been coupled with attacks on our communities and our neighbors near and far, attacks on our histories, attacks on our collective abilities to cultivate critical knowledge in the service of more just and vibrant futures for all. In Ethnic Studies, we know this world. We know its roots and its branches. We also inhabit traditions that learn from the steadfast refusals, alternatives, and possible futures long studied, designed, and rehearsed against these violent terms.

Michael Omi and Howard Winant provide a useful framework to describe this dynamic: the ongoing encounter between racial despotism and racial democracy. Despotism, Omi and Winant tell us, refers to “the deprivation of life, liberty, or land; dispossession, violence, confinement, coerced labor, exclusion, and denial of rights or due process.” In the United States, we know, such practices have been predicated on the production and maintenance of racism and its racial logics.

And yet, arrayed against this racial despotism, Omi and Winant emphasize, following Robin D. G. Kelley, are freedom dreams–“among the most enduring contributions to the foundation of democracy in the modern world.”

With this idea in mind, Dr. Ruha Benjamin has recently urged us to consider what the first step is in unleashing the potential for freedom dreams: “to quiet the cynical voice in our heads that stands watch, guarding the borders of our imagination. Shhh,” Benjamin writes … “Do you hear? That is the sound of our collective dreams digging tunnels, scaling walls, and making a way outta no way.”

The sound of our students’ imaginations, inside and outside of our classrooms, these last few years, this is the sound of freedom dreaming. It’s the sound, not only of digging tunnels and scaling walls, but also the organized chaos of fortifying foundations and rehearsing the worlds we wish to inhabit.

The Department of Ethnic Studies has sought to accompany our students in this dreaming, to nourish our collective dreaming with knowledge, inquiry, curiosity. And despite, or perhaps because, of the intensity of the current encounter between despotism and democracy, Ethnic Studies has sought to marshal all the abundance we can muster.

This year alone, in the Department, 50 faculty members, lecturers, graduate students, and staff offered you over 100 courses, plus well over a dozen additional student-facilitated Decals, Berkeley Connect courses, and staff-run seminars. Individual student enrollments across these courses totaled well over 5000.

This year, the Department nourished our dreaming by sponsoring or cosponsoring numerous academic events that shed light on the present. In the month of April alone, the Department supported at least a dozen public events, from the legacies of the Page Act, to trans Indigenous theory, to Palestine, Here, There, and Everywhere. (For a full archive of events, see the Ethnic Studies Calendar(link is external).)

The Department’s PhD program, the first of its kind, marked its 40th anniversary with a day-long symposium reckoning with various flashpoints, past and present, in the history and trajectory of the field. More on this event below! (Berkeleyside(link is external) covered the symposium with a wonderful feature!)

And since the work of nourishing the imagination with knowledge operates on time scales of years and decades, the Department has been intentional in growing its faculty ranks. More on an historic faculty recruitment season below!

In a moment when work like ours is demeaned, defamed, and defunded, Berkeley Ethnic Studies is making historic investments in the scholarship and teaching our faculty and students pursue. Today, tomorrow, and for years to come.

My term as Department Chair ends this summer. It’s been a true honor to do the work alongside such incredible students, faculty, and staff.

Dr. Lorena Oropeza has graciously agreed to serve as the next Chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies, effective July 1, 2025! Dr. Oropeza is an award-winning historian whose research sits at the intersection of race, empire, and Chicano Studies. She is the author of ¡Raza Sí! ¡Guerra No!Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Vietnam War Era (2005) and The King of Adobe: Reis López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement (2019), and is currently at work on A Mexican History of The United States

Dr. Oropeza joined the Berkeley faculty in 2022, after over 25 years at UC Davis, where she was a professor of History and, most recently, the Associate Vice Chancellor of Academic Diversity. Since arriving at Berkeley, Dr. Oropeza has been an instant and impactful leader and program builder, serving as coordinator of the Chicanx Latinx Studies Program, the co-lead of the Latinx and Democracy Cluster, and the faculty lead of the Berkeley Faculty Writing Collective.

The Department is in great hands with this visionary, collaborative, and creative leader!  

SPRING 2025 COMMENCEMENT

Doctor of Philosophy

Masters of Arts

AJ Al-Kurdi ◊ Luiza Bastos Lages ◊ Isabella Garcia Larissa Nez ◊ Derek Wu

Bachelors of Arts

ASIAN AMERICAN AND ASIAN DIASPORA STUDIES

Vickie Cai* ◊ Frances Sunheng Chai ◊ Katelyn Janessa Cheng ◊ Grace Chu

Renee Choy ◊ Gavriel Sotto Curameng ◊ Nancy Hu ◊ Mariyah Janelle Tabuno

Amanda Ai Takemoto* ◊ Joan Tran ◊ Madeleine Teresa Wong*

CHICANX LATINX STUDIES

Kristal Acosta ◊ Paola Castellanos Martinez ◊ Abigail Sarah Corcio

Carolina Cisneros Cruz ◊ Mark Anthony Del Toro Magaña ◊ Emily Ann Fregoso

Belén Maria González* ◊ Yamilekx Hernandez Guzman ◊ Maria Herrera ◊ Jackie Kleeberg*Leanna Lam* ◊ Arthur Lemus ◊ Manuela Martinez ◊ Jose Mendez-Ruiz ◊ Anadeisi Pablo Mendoza Andrea Molina ◊ Marisol Morales Hernandez ◊ Sarah Elizabeth Morales* ◊ Divina Simoné Moreno Liliana Gonzalez Nava ◊ Alejandra Ortiz-Menchaca ◊ Eric Ramirez Zepeda ◊ Alexis Rivera Anna Lee Patricia Sanchez* ◊ Krysta Solorio Vazquez* ◊ Xavier Antonio Tejada

Elaine Valenzuela ◊ Nadia Gabriela Vargas* ◊ Karen Villegas ◊ Sarai Yepiz

ETHNIC STUDIES

Maritza Aguirre Naranjo ◊ Fatima Alvarado* ◊ Aura Berry ◊ Brenda Areli Carrillo*

Maria Luisa De Jesus Casique Leon ◊ Famh Chao ◊ Ethan Daniel Collier-Moreno

Erika Estrada Cruz ◊ Isacar Duarte ◊ Ivonne Galicia ◊ Emily Gallardo*

Diego Jonathan Garcia ◊ Andrea Gonzales Villagran ◊ Kaneesha Goyal

Alexia Guerra Cardona ◊ Renee Gutierrez ◊ Morgen Guzman* ◊ Tatum Hurley*

Leanna Lam* ◊ Stephanie Marcella Lopez* ◊ Chloe Ma ◊ Dahani Sathya Mataraarachchi

Kate McSwain ◊ Andrea Medrano Romero ◊ Junior Mejia ◊ Rocio Menendez*

Melissa Mico Varela Middleton* ◊ Melody Orate Moneda ◊ Merilyn Navarro Sanchez

Annette Norma Onate-Castro ◊ Juliana Maryam Ornelas-Perez ◊ Isis Marie Queen

Brenda Lizbeth Quintero-Murillo ◊ Emily Nicole Ramirez ◊ Eric Ramirez Zepeda

Nadine Ratinho ◊ Elizabeth Josefina Rico ◊ Flor Rios ◊ Dení Carolina Rodriguez

Kristal Roman ◊ Maria Isabel Romero Francis ◊ Alaa Safia ◊ Auva Soheili

Berenisse Abigaily Suarez Rodriguez* ◊ Natalie Ayelén Ureño*

Nadia Gabriela Vargas* ◊ X Gabriel Vazquez* ◊ Julianne Westbrook

Hernan Zaragoza Lemus* Kahel Joem Zedekiah ◊ Wilfredo Zuloaga-Hernandez

NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES

Jasmine Arianna Gonzales* ◊ Ruby Nicole Elsie King ◊ Doole Jennie Wiener*

(* Denotes Distinction in General Scholarship)

Undergraduate Honors Theses

                                                                    

Paola Castellanos Martinez
“Status, Access, and Identity: Examining the Experiences of Undocumented Law Students in the U.S.”

Faculty Advisor: Jesus Barraza

Grace Chu
"Through the Ears and Eyes of an Entrepreneur: Listening to and Envisioning the Insight from Low-Income Asian American Entrepreneurs from Oakland, California"

Faculty Advisor: Harvey Dong

Abigail Sarah Corcio
“The Benefits of Dual Language Immersion Practices for Bilingual Latine Students”

Faculty Advisor: Cati de los Rios

Gavriel Sotto Curameng

“Centering Filipino-American Student Labor in Student-Initiated Outreach and Retention Projects”

Faculty Advisor: Lisa Hirai Tsuchitani

Emily Gallardo
"Beyond the Orange Curtain: Educational Inequities and the Lived Experiences of Latino Students in Orange County, California”

Faculty Advisor: Pablo Gonzalez

Alexia Guerra Cardona
“De Centroamérica No Me Puedo Olvidar (I can’t forget about Central America): The Role of Memory of Migration in the Educational Trajectories of 1.5 and second-generation Central Americans pursuing higher education at the University of California, Berkeley”

Faculty Advisor: Enrique Lima

Ruby Nicole Elsie King
“Aah takuníktaamhinaatih [They Are Packing Fire]”

Faculty Advisor: Shari Huhndorf

Chloe Ma
“Overrepresentation v. Invisibility: Undocumented Asian Immigrants in Higher Education”

Faculty Advisor: Lisa Hirai Tsuchitani

Melody Orate Moneda

“Building the Queer and Trans Asian Pacific American Living Archive”

Faculty Advisor: Vernadette Gonzalez

Anna Lee Patricia Sanchez
“Reclaiming Space in Academia: The Collective Power of Chicana/Latina Mother-Scholars ¡She Se Puede!”

Faculty Advisor: Pablo Gonzalez

Auva Soheili“Revolution as a Living Memory: How Artists Enshrine Community Affect in the Vernacular”

Faculty Advisor: Salar Mameni

Berenisse Abigaily Suarez Rodriguez
“Más Allá de las Sombras: Poverty, Violence, Migration, Opportunity and The Lives of Central American Women”

Faculty Advisor: Enrique Lima

Kristal Roman
“We Still Here: The Impact of Gendered Expectations on Persistence for First-Generation, BIWOC Undergraduates”

Faculty Advisor: Lisa Hirai Tsuchitani

Madeleine Teresa Wong
“Fung Lum, The Pang Dynasty: The Rise of Transnational Restaurant Chain “Fung Lum” and its Impact on American Perceptions of Chinese Food”

Faculty Advisor: Lok Siu

New Faculty

Let’s welcome the newest additions to our ES Community!

Ethnic Studies just completed an unprecedented faculty recruitment season. We ran three distinct national searches simultaneously. Along the way, search committees reviewed over 410(!) applications. We brought twelve incredible scholars to campus, and recommended the campus make offers to six. All six scholars have accepted faculty positions in the Department of Ethnic Studies. They will join five additional faculty hired in the last few years, putting our faculty numbers at an all-time high.

In addition to their own unique scholarly trajectories, as a group these dynamic new faculty are poised to have a transformative impact on the Department’s overall breadth and depth across and among our fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies, Pacific Islander Studies, Latinx Studies, Critical SWANA studies, and more. Truly an historic moment for Berkeley Ethnic Studies!

 

 

Recent Ethnic Studies Accolades

Select Alumni News

Numerous PhD alumni with expertise in Native Studies published their first scholarly books. Congratulations!

40th Anniversary Graduate Symposium

This year marks the 40th anniversary of UC Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies Ph.D. program, the oldest in the country. Since its founding in 1984, the program has graduated over 170 students, who have gone on to become professors, artists, elected officials and other leaders. To mark this moment, the Department brought together alumni in conversation with current doctoral students to reflect on the social and political conditions that shape their work as students. What are the flashpoints from which the work we do emerges and to which it responds? How do we assess the social, material, political, and cultural terrain of our present? How do we apprehend the problem-space in which we pursue inquiry, and how has that problem-space shifted from 1969 to 1984 to today? How do we situate ourselves as scholars, working within and animated by our relation to the resources, the structures, the principles and values of the research university? And what does it mean to do that work in a moment of danger?

Presenters included: Lillian Castillo-Speed, Fernanda Cunha,Harvey Dong, Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vasquez, Sarah Halabe,  Pilar Jefferson, Jessica Jiang, Tala Khanmalek, Gregoria Rosa Olson, Margaret Rhee, Juana Maria Rodriguez, and Rickey Vincent.

Sandra Richmond, Director of Administration. Sandy is retiring this summer after more than thirty years of illustrious service at UC Berkeley, the last six of which she’s managed Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and African American Studies. Her office is the Grand Central Station, and she has ensured that three completely different railroad companies are running their trains on time -- through pandemics, labor strikes, shifts in campus policies and practices, and external assaults on our work. And she has always done the work with an eye toward making this place a better, more welcoming place to work, and for finding ways to deepen the good work we do and to strengthen our team for the future. This year, Sandy received distinguished staff awards from the Chancellor and the Division of the Social Sciences.

Sandy – on behalf of the Department, thank you for your contributions big and small, day in and day out, lo these many years.

Thomas Biolsi, Professor of Native American Studies. A social-cultural anthropologist by training, Tom is a leading scholar of tribal politics, tribal governments, and relations between those governments and state and federal governments. He has worked with the Lakota for more than four decades. Through that work, he has published numerous articles, chapters, reviews, and three major books -- Organizing the Lakota: The Political Economy of the New Deal on Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations (1992), Deadliest Enemies: Law and Race Relations on and off Rosebud Reservation (2001), and Power and Progress on the Prairie: Governing People on Rosebud Reservation (2018). That said, many of us know Tom best as an active citizen of this Department. He routinely taught lower division and upper division courses that bridged Native American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and studies of inequality. He mentored numerous students through the PhD program with care and dedication. He frequently served as coordinator of the Native American Studies Program, and was Department Chair from 2009 to 2012. A detail-oriented advocate of our faculty and our department, Tom always seemed to be thinking three steps ahead about how best to maintain and strengthen our work. Congratulations on your retirement!

As we work hard to make sure we can continue to hire and retain talented faculty, attract and support top graduate students, and inspire our game-changing undergraduates, every gift is appreciated and helpful!