- Anthropology 300 - African Technoscience
- Anthropology 343 - African Pasts, African Futures
- Anthropology 345 - Black Queer Diaspora
- Anthropology 355 - Anthropology of Colonialism
- Anthropology 362 - Gender and Ethnicity in China and Tibet
- Anthropology 363 - Race and Transnational China
- Anthropology 371 - Race and Caste
- Anthropology 379 - Critical Interventions in American Indian Studies
- Anthropology 387 - African Bodies: Medicine, Labor, Modernity
- Anthropology 398 - Race and Migration
- Anthropology 443 - Race and Modernity
Courses
- What makes a course a CRES course?
- Required CRES Courses
- Courses Offered Fall 2025 - Spring 2026
- Past CRES Courses
- Additional CRES courses
CRES courses include discussion of oppression and marginalization, as well as how people have analyzed their worlds, built knowledge, community, and resistance. Students explore themes of migration, colonialism, indigeneity, the structures and infrastructures of inequality, lived experiences, power, and the history of how race, ethnicity, and indigeneity have been studied.
The kinds of questions people in CRES study include: How do we locate dance in cross-cultural contexts? What is the effect of Deuteronomy on the ethnic formation of its various communities of reception? In what ways did music articulate the stakes of the Black freedom struggle and the meanings of freedom? What has historically been the role of the law and the courts in the construction of racial categories and the production of racial inequality in the United States?
What makes a course a CRES course?
As of Fall 2022, in order for courses to be approved as CRES foundational or CRES designated, they must clearly indicate in the course description how they meet these criteria.
CRES foundational courses treat specific categories of race and ethnicity as the central object of inquiry and teach approaches (including theories and methods) to the study of race and/or ethnicity within given disciplines. CRES foundational courses are designed to provide foundational training for the CRES major, and are cross-listed in both the department and in CRES.
For a list of all CRES foundational courses, see the . For a list of all CRES foundational courses taught this year, go to the and select "CRES" under Subject.
CRES designated courses examine questions of race and ethnicity for half of the semester or more. Topics might include the history and politics of racial and ethnic categories; the construction of race and ethnicity in social, economic, and cultural organization; and the experiences of marginalized and oppressed peoples.
What makes this a CRES course?
Theatre 276 / CRES 276
Community-Based Performance
Community-Based Performance
Theatre 276 / CRES 276
Community-Based Performance
Kate Duffly, Professor
This course explores the role of theatre-making in civic change, with a focus on the history of racism and exclusion in Portland. In this course, students will study approaches to theatre that directly engage with local communities, as well as ways the history of theatre can be better understood as being intertwined with and responsive to civic life. In collaboration with local theatre companies and practitioners, students will incorporate their classroom studies on historically relevant theatre practices (such as Augusto Boal鈥檚 Theatre of the Oppressed; the United Farmworkers鈥 El Teatro Campesino; and the Black Arts Movement) with a firsthand engagement in local community-based groups using theatre for community engagement.
History 334 / CRES 384
Race and the Politics of Decolonization
Race and the Politics of Decolonization
History 334 / CRES 384
Race and the Politics of Decolonization
Radhika Natarajan, Professor
This course asks, how was the struggle for decolonization in the British Empire shaped by the politics of race? How was human difference theorized and how did imperial racisms constrain the possibilities for freedom in a post-imperial world? To answer these questions we will examine freedom struggles in the British Empire, from the end of World War I to the present day. The course seeks to investigate experience, politics, and ideas. Thus, we will consider the experience of colonialism and the meanings of freedom, the question of how independence was won, and also how decolonization was a project of 鈥渨orld-making鈥 that is, imagining the world beyond the hierarchies of empire. We will decenter the national frameworks of traditional decolonization narratives both by exploring the challenge of diversity within the colony/nation as well as transcolonial and international movements to instantiate freedom. We will consider the legacies of colonial rule that continued after formal independence and the ongoing struggles for decolonization that exist in multiple sites and take multiple forms today. Throughout, we will pay attention to the ways that race and racisms operate through gendered difference.
Sociology 348 / CRES 348
Race, Economy, Policy
Race, Economy, Policy
Sociology 348 / CRES 348
Race, Economy, Policy
Marc Schneiberg, Professor
An economic sociology of race and ethnicity, this (foundational) course address how the social and institutional structure of the economy, public policies toward key markets and the dynamics they produce shape the fates, life chances, barriers and opportunities faced by African Americans, other etho-racial groups and their communities in the contemporary US. Topics covered include the impact on black communities of the decline of the mass production corporation, the role of networks and white ethnic mobilization in structuring labor markets, and how linkage between housing markets, schools and credit markets within a residentially segregated society foster self-reinforcing cycles of (dis)advantage. Topics also include how African American and other marginalized groups mobilize/create social structures in response to dynamics of segregation and impoverishment, how employing organizations meet demands for equity and inclusion, and how various policies seek to address those issues.
English 333 / CRES 330
Memory and Modernity in the Indian Ocean
Memory and Modernity in the Indian Ocean
English 333 / CRES 330
Memory and Modernity in the Indian Ocean
Kritish Rajbhandari, Professor
This course engages with race and ethnicity in the following ways: through transdisciplinary analysis of literature alongside historical documents and scholarship, this course examines how the categories of race and ethnicity (as well as caste, class and religion) were constructed and contested in the Indian Ocean region particularly in the context of colonialism and Afro-Asian exchange and migrations. It engages with theories of modernity, postcolonialism, and transnationalism, with particular focus on the problems of the relationship between embodiment and community, the production of history, subalternity and gender, and the afterlives of slavery in the Indian Ocean context.
Required CRES Courses
Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies 300 - Junior Seminar
Full course for one semester. This course for CRES majors explores the way race and ethnicity can be analyzed from interdisciplinary perspectives, considering categories of 'race' and 'ethnicity' a) both together and in relation to each other, and b) as designating or emerging out of separate politics of difference and otherness. Course topics may change from year to year; the course may be repeated for credit when topics vary. Prerequisites: Junior or senior standing and completion of or concurrent enrollment in the CRES disciplinary courses requirement.
Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies 470 - Thesis
Full course for one year.
Courses Fall 2025 - Spring 2026
Fall 2025
- DANC 112/CRES 162 - Introduction to Contemporary Dance - Cross Cultural Contexts
- DANC 211 - Afro-Contemporary Dance
- DANC 260 - Dances of Bali, Indonesia
- GER 355/ENG 355/LIT346 - 20th Century Jewish Literature
- HIST 205 - The 20th Century Middle East Through Music
- HIST 369/CRES 389 - Race and Law in American History
- MUS 150/CRES 150 - The Cultural Study of Music
- MUS 221 - Form and Listening
- MUS 254/CRES 254 - Africa and Black Music
- REL 151 - Introduction to Judaism
- REL 226/CRES 226 - Islam in America
- REL 364 - Religion in the US-Mexico Borderlands
- RUS 325/LIT 360 - Soviet World Literature
- SOC 326 - Science and Social Difference
Spring 2026
- ANTH 343/CRES 392 - African Pasts, African Futures
- ANTH 371/CRES 300/CRES 391 - Race and Caste (CRES Junior Seminar)
- DANC 362 - Dance Ecologies
- ENG 370 - The Palestinians
- HIST 303 - History of the Sahara
- HIST 315/CRES 385 - Race, Ethnicity, and Empire
- MUS 355 - Black Women's Music
- REL 354/CRES 324 - Bible, Race, and Empire
- RUS 367/LIT 367 - Central Asia & The Caucasus
- SOC 280 - Social Movements
- SPAN 386/LIT 396 - Decolonial Theory & Practice
Past CRES Courses
This list represents CRES courses that have been offered in the past and shows the range of faculty expertise and offerings in our program.
Anthropology
Dance
History
Literature
Music
Religion
Sociology
Additional CRES courses
Some departments offer CRES designated courses, but since these departments are not affiliated they are not guaranteed to be taught every other year and do not automatically satisfy CRES Disciplinary Group I or II requirements. Students may petition the committee to have them satisfy those requirements if these courses are aligned with their overall program of study.
- Economics 364 - Economics of Population, Gender, and Race
- Political Science 371 - Identity Politics
- Psychology 325 - Stereotyping and Prejudice