Twin Cities campus

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Twin Cities Campus

Race, Indigeneity, Gender, and Sexuality Minor

Anthropology
College of Liberal Arts
Link to a list of faculty for this program.
Contact Information
Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality Studies Initiative 310 Scott Hall 72 Pleasant St SE Minneapolis, MN 55455 612-626-1313
Email: rigs@umn.edu
Website: https://cla.umn.edu/rigs
  • Program Type: Graduate free-standing minor
  • Requirements for this program are current for Fall 2020
  • Length of program in credits (doctoral): 12
  • This program does not require summer semesters for timely completion.
The RIGS doctoral minor is the critical and comparative study of race, ethnicity, and indigeneity, as well as the interrogation of significant social categories of power and inequality, namely race, ethnicity, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, class, sovereignty, and diaspora. This interdisciplinary minor foregrounds a transnational and comparative framework to analyze multiple forms of social difference and their interactions in relation to one another. While the focus is on the United States, given the minor’s attention to the making of social categories and borders, the analytical lens and purview of the minor will be transnational in scale and scope. Grounded by a strong commitment to the analyses and understanding of power relations, structural inequality, and social justice through a relational and multidisciplinary approach, the RIGS graduate minor focuses on the various interlinked processes that constitute the categories and groups in the first place, instead of taking for granted the a priori existence of separate groups, communities, experiences, and identities. This approach is at the vanguard of comparative race, ethnicity, and indigeneity, which is moving away from juxtaposing discrete groups and toward theorizing mutual constitution. Accordingly, this graduate minor privileges intersectionality, interdisciplinary, transnationalism, comparison, and relationality. What distinguishes this graduate minor is its conceptual and theoretical approach, which not only makes this program complementary to existing graduate courses of study at UMN, but also propels us to the cutting-edge of comparable programs at other institutions. The RIGS doctoral minor strengthens student work in their major field of study as students learn how best to integrate critical and comparative race, ethnicity, and indigeneity into their existing work, and how to complement their research to include multiple indigenous and critical race methodologies.
Program Delivery
  • via classroom (the majority of instruction is face-to-face)
Prerequisites for Admission
Special Application Requirements:
Students interested in the minor are strongly encouraged to confer with their major field advisor and director of graduate studies, and the Race, Indigeneity, Gender, and Sexuality (RIGS) director of graduate studies regarding feasibility and requirements.
For an online application or for more information about graduate education admissions, see the General Information section of this website.
Program Requirements
Use of 4xxx courses toward program requirements is permitted under certain conditions with adviser approval.
Use of 4xxx-level coursework requires pre-approval by the RIGS director of graduate studies. Courses offered for variable credit must be taken for 3 credits. The minimum cumulative GPA for minor field coursework is 3.00.
Required Coursework (6 credits)
Proseminar (3 credits)
Select 1 of the following courses in consultation with the RIGS director of graduate studies. If HIST 8910 Topics is chosen, take Race and Class in the United States for 3 credits.
AFRO 8202 - Seminar: Intellectual History of Race (3.0 cr)
HIST 8910 - Topics in U.S. History (1.0-4.0 cr)
SOC 8211 - The Sociology of Race & Racialization (3.0 cr)
Interdisciplinary Methodologies (3 credits)
Select 1 of the following courses in consultation with the RIGS director of graduate studies:
AMST 8289 - Ethnographic Research Methods: Research Strategies in American Studies (3.0 cr)
ANTH 8203 - Research Methods in Social and Cultural Anthropology (3.0 cr)
COMM 8110 - Seminar: Communication Research Methods (3.0 cr)
GWSS 8201 - Feminist Theory and Methods in the Social Sciences (3.0 cr)
Electives (6 credits)
Select 6 credits in consultation with the RIGS director of graduate studies. Topics courses must be 3 credits of the section noted: AMIN 8910 AmInd & Indigenous Studies; ANTH 8510 Decolonizing Archives; ANTH 8810 Anthro of Capitalism; HIST 5910 Am Colonial & Indigenous Hist; HIST 5910 Intersect of Native & AfAm Hist; HIST 8910 Race & Class in US; HIST 8960 Politics of Land; HIST 8970 W. Imperialisms; POL 8260 Theorizing Violence; SOC 8090 Soc of Black Exp; SOC 8190 Genocide & Mass Violence.
AFRO 5866 - The Civil Rights and Black Power Movement, 1954-1984 (3.0 cr)
AFRO 8202 - Seminar: Intellectual History of Race (3.0 cr)
AMIN 5402 - American Indians and the Cinema [AH, DSJ] (3.0 cr)
AMIN 5409 - American Indian Women: Ethnographic and Ethnohistorical Perspectives [HIS, DSJ] (3.0 cr)
AMIN 5412 - Comparative Indigenous Feminisms [GP] (3.0 cr)
AMIN 5890 - Readings in American Indian and Indigenous History (3.0 cr)
AMIN 5920 - Topics in American Indian Studies (3.0 cr)
AMIN 8301 - Critical Indigenous Theory (3.0 cr)
AMIN 8910 - Topics in American Indian and Indigenous Studies (1.0-3.0 cr)
AMST 5920 - Topics in American Studies (1.0-4.0 cr)
ANTH 8203 - Research Methods in Social and Cultural Anthropology (3.0 cr)
ANTH 8510 - Topics in Archaeology (3.0 cr)
ANTH 8810 - Topics in Sociocultural Anthropology (3.0 cr)
CHIC 5374 - Migrant Farmworkers in the United States: Families, Work, and Advocacy [CIV] (4.0 cr)
CI 8416 - Speculative Fiction, Radical Imagination, and Social Change (3.0 cr)
CI 8645 - Indigenous Language Revitalization and Activist Research Methods (3.0 cr)
GWSS 5104 - Transnational Feminist Theory (3.0 cr)
GWSS 8260 - Seminar: Race, Representation and Resistance (3.0 cr)
HIST 5890 - Readings in American Indian and Indigenous History (3.0 cr)
HIST 5910 - Topics in U.S. History (1.0-4.0 cr)
HIST 8910 - Topics in U.S. History (1.0-4.0 cr)
HIST 8960 - Topics in History (1.0-4.0 cr)
HIST 8970 - Advanced Research in Quantitative History (3.0 cr)
HSPH 8003 - Race and Indigeneity in Heritage Representation (3.0 cr)
PA 5690 - Topics in Women, Gender and Public Policy (0.5-3.0 cr)
PA 8690 - Advanced Topics in Women, Gender and Public Policy (1.0-3.0 cr)
POL 8260 - Topics in Political Theory (3.0 cr)
SOC 8090 - Topics in Sociology (1.5-3.0 cr)
SOC 8190 - Topics in Law, Crime, and Deviance (3.0 cr)
SOC 8211 - The Sociology of Race & Racialization (3.0 cr)
Program Sub-plans
Students are required to complete one of the following sub-plans.
Students may not complete the program with more than one sub-plan.
Doctoral
  
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AFRO 8202 - Seminar: Intellectual History of Race
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
At its heart, the 8202 seminar is about dialogue, interrogating scholarship on race, intellectual history, and knowledge production. We will be in deep conversation with one another as we negotiate meaning around the intellectual history of race. Dialogue, indeed, is at the heart of this graduate seminar experience. Given the multidisciplinary composition of the students and content in 8202, we build together to form a learning whole in a remote format. Central to our work is excavating the 500 year legacy of race thought and making into the contemporary period.
HIST 8910 - Topics in U.S. History
Credits: 1.0 -4.0 [max 15.0]
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Topics not covered in regular courses.
SOC 8211 - The Sociology of Race & Racialization
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Major theoretical debates. Classic and contemporary theoretical approaches to studying U.S. race relations; contemporary and historical experiences of specific racial and ethnic groups.
AMST 8289 - Ethnographic Research Methods: Research Strategies in American Studies
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Periodic Spring
Students conduct an empirical research project, write a final paper. Assumptions/practices of positivism, reflexive science, and feminist methodology. Issues surrounding politics/ethics of feminist research. Dilemmas in practice of fieldwork, oral histories, reading, and writing. prereq: 8288 or instr consent
ANTH 8203 - Research Methods in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall
Classic and current issues in research methodology, including positivist, interpretivist, feminist, and postmodernist frameworks. Methodology, in the broadest sense of the concept, is evaluated. Students conduct three research exercises and set up an ethnographic research project. prereq: Grad anth major or instr consent
COMM 8110 - Seminar: Communication Research Methods
Credits: 3.0 [max 15.0]
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Evaluation of research methods in speech-communication. prereq: undergrad degree in spch-comm or equiv
GWSS 8201 - Feminist Theory and Methods in the Social Sciences
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Seminar on recent theories, including feminist versions of positivist, interpretivist, critical theoretical, and postmodernist models of social science knowledge. Methodologies congenial to feminist practices of inquiry, including use of narrative in theory, feminist ethnography, discourse analysis, and comparative methods in history.
AFRO 5866 - The Civil Rights and Black Power Movement, 1954-1984
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: Afro 3866/Afro 5866/Hist 3856
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Every Fall
The "second reconstruction." Failure of Reconstruction, abdication of black civil rights in 19th century. Post-1945 assault on white supremacy via courts/state, grass-roots southern movement in 1950s/1960s. Black struggle in north and west, emphasis on Black Power by new organizations/ideologies/leaders. Ascendancy of Reagan, conservative assault on movement.
AFRO 8202 - Seminar: Intellectual History of Race
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
At its heart, the 8202 seminar is about dialogue, interrogating scholarship on race, intellectual history, and knowledge production. We will be in deep conversation with one another as we negotiate meaning around the intellectual history of race. Dialogue, indeed, is at the heart of this graduate seminar experience. Given the multidisciplinary composition of the students and content in 8202, we build together to form a learning whole in a remote format. Central to our work is excavating the 500 year legacy of race thought and making into the contemporary period.
AMIN 5402 - American Indians and the Cinema (AH, DSJ)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: AmIn 3402/AmIn 5402
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Every Spring & Summer
Representations of American Indians in film, historically/contemporarily. What such representations assert about Native experience and cultural viability. What they reflect about particular relationships of power.
AMIN 5409 - American Indian Women: Ethnographic and Ethnohistorical Perspectives (HIS, DSJ)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: AmIn 3409/AmIn 5409
Typically offered: Fall Even Year
Comparative survey of ethnographic/ethnohistorical writings by/about American Indian women.
AMIN 5412 - Comparative Indigenous Feminisms (GP)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: AmIn 5412/Chic 3412/GWSS 3515/
Grading Basis: OPT No Aud
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
The course will examine the relationship between Western feminism and indigenous feminism as well as the interconnections between women of color feminism and indigenous feminism. In addition to exploring how indigenous feminists have theorized from 'the flesh' of their embodied experience of colonialism, the course will also consider how indigenous women are articulating decolonization and the embodiment of autonomy through scholarship, cultural revitalization, and activism.
AMIN 5890 - Readings in American Indian and Indigenous History
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: AmIn 5890/Hist 5890
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Students in this course will read recently published scholarship in American Indian and Indigenous history that takes up pressing research questions, promises to push inquiry in new directions, and that theorizes important interventions in our thinking to understand where the field is situated and moving. Reflecting the instinctively interdisciplinary nature of American Indian and Indigenous history, readings will be drawn not just from the discipline of history but across other disciplines such as Anthropology, American Studies, Geography, Literature, Political Science, and Legal Studies. As well, readings will include scholarship that reaches out to embrace the Global Indigenous studies turn. prereq: Advanced undergrad with instr consent or grad student
AMIN 5920 - Topics in American Indian Studies
Credits: 3.0 [max 12.0]
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Various topics in American Indian studies, depending upon instructor/semester.
AMIN 8301 - Critical Indigenous Theory
Credits: 3.0 [max 6.0]
Grading Basis: A-F only
Typically offered: Every Fall
This course covers the "critical turn" in American Indian and Native or Indigenous Studies as evident in the emergence of three overlapping threads or intellectual/political genealogies: critiques of Indigeneity (the claims and conditions of nativeness to specific places), Indigenous Feminist (which foregrounds the salience of gender in indigenous critiques of power structures), and Indigenous Queer, sometimes labeled "Two-Spirit" (which foregrounds sexuality). What are the analytical, political and cultural backgrounds and what are their purchases for theory, critique, and practice? For interrogating academic and non-academic (including Indigenous) forms of inquiry and knowledge production and being in the world?
AMIN 8910 - Topics in American Indian and Indigenous Studies
Credits: 1.0 -3.0 [max 9.0]
Typically offered: Periodic Fall, Spring & Summer
This is a topics shell
AMST 5920 - Topics in American Studies
Credits: 1.0 -4.0 [max 9.0]
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Topics specified in Class Schedule.
ANTH 8203 - Research Methods in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall
Classic and current issues in research methodology, including positivist, interpretivist, feminist, and postmodernist frameworks. Methodology, in the broadest sense of the concept, is evaluated. Students conduct three research exercises and set up an ethnographic research project. prereq: Grad anth major or instr consent
ANTH 8510 - Topics in Archaeology
Credits: 3.0 [max 9.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Seminar examines particular aspects of archaeological methods and/or theory. Topics vary according to student and faculty interests.
ANTH 8810 - Topics in Sociocultural Anthropology
Credits: 3.0 [max 9.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Seminar examines particular aspects of method and/or theory. Topics vary according to student and faculty interests.
CHIC 5374 - Migrant Farmworkers in the United States: Families, Work, and Advocacy (CIV)
Credits: 4.0 [max 4.0]
Course Equivalencies: Chic 3374/Chic 5374
Typically offered: Every Spring
Socioeconomic/political forces that impact migrant farmworkers. Effects of the laws and policies on everyday life. Theoretical assumptions/strategies of unions and advocacy groups. Role/power of consumer. How consuming cheap food occurs at expense of farmworkers.
CI 8416 - Speculative Fiction, Radical Imagination, and Social Change
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Spring Odd Year
Speculative fiction is a blanket term for fantasy, science fiction, horror, and other nonmimetic genres predicated on challenging consensus reality and its societal norms. The most dynamic and diverse field of modern storytelling, speculative fiction serves as a catalyst, in and beyond the classroom, for radical imagination: one that contests the oppressive socio-economic system by reimagining race, gender, class, and other real-world issues. This seminar examines the cultural work performed by speculative fiction addressed to children and young adults. Engaging with stories that suggest alternatives to how we live now, students develop mental habits of global citizens who value diversity and strive for social transformation. Works of speculative fiction for the young reader are discussed as particle accelerators for ideas of change and as sites of resistance against exclusion and systemic inequalities. The focus is on speculative fiction by indigenous, minority, and postcolonial authors. Exploring the ways in which these works interrogate dominant notions of reality and structures of meaning helps students appreciate speculative fiction as a tool for imagining radical social change.
CI 8645 - Indigenous Language Revitalization and Activist Research Methods
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis: A-F only
Typically offered: Fall Even Year
This course is a hands-on look at activist research methods situated in the context of Indigenous Language Revitalization. That is, what happens when a community problem is the organizing force in research? Students will be expected to both engage in language learning, research, designing a research project, and connecting this to critical thinking as applied to culture, language and indigenous language revitalization.
GWSS 5104 - Transnational Feminist Theory
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Fall Odd Year
Third World and transnational feminisms. Interrogating the categories of "women," "feminism," and "Third World." Varieties of power/oppression that women have endured/resisted, including colonization, nationalism, globalization, and capitalism. Concentrates on postcolonial context.
GWSS 8260 - Seminar: Race, Representation and Resistance
Credits: 3.0 [max 6.0]
Typically offered: Every Spring
Race, racialization, racial justice as related to representation/struggles for social/economic justice. Intersectional analysis of power, politics, ideology/identity. Queer of color critique, women of color feminisms, critical sex/body positive approaches. prereq: Grad student
HIST 5890 - Readings in American Indian and Indigenous History
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: AmIn 5890/Hist 5890
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Students in this course will read recently published scholarship in American Indian and Indigenous history that takes up pressing research questions, promises to push inquiry in new directions, and that theorizes important interventions in our thinking to understand where the field is situated and moving. Reflecting the instinctively interdisciplinary nature of American Indian and Indigenous history, readings will be drawn not just from the discipline of history but across other disciplines such as Anthropology, American Studies, Geography, Literature, Political Science, and Legal Studies. As well, readings will include scholarship that reaches out to embrace the Global Indigenous studies turn. prereq: Advanced undergrad with instr consent or grad student
HIST 5910 - Topics in U.S. History
Credits: 1.0 -4.0 [max 20.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Selected topics in U.S. history not covered in regular courses. Taught as staffing permits. prereq: Grad or advanced undergrad student with instr consent
HIST 8910 - Topics in U.S. History
Credits: 1.0 -4.0 [max 15.0]
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Topics not covered in regular courses.
HIST 8960 - Topics in History
Credits: 1.0 -4.0 [max 20.0]
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Topics not covered in regular courses.
HIST 8970 - Advanced Research in Quantitative History
Credits: 3.0 [max 12.0]
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Students carry out publishable-quality research on quantitative history topic. prereq: Grad student
HSPH 8003 - Race and Indigeneity in Heritage Representation
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Every Spring
This seminar will explore the changes in how diversity has been represented in historical interpretations in the past, and how practice is changing in response to the contemporary and anticipated social context of the United States. "Diversity" has historically been assumed to derive from categories such as race or culture, concepts constructed in the discipline of anthropology but taken up as the foundation for typologies in other arenas such as art history, architectural history, museums, and public policy. What is problematic in such an approach? What happens to communities defined by shared history, political sovereignty, and disenfranchisement? What are the implications beyond museums for those communities? Finally, how can we think differently about diversity without re-inscribing harmful constructions of difference?
PA 5690 - Topics in Women, Gender and Public Policy
Credits: 0.5 -3.0 [max 9.0]
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Selected topics. prereq: Grad student or instr consent
PA 8690 - Advanced Topics in Women, Gender and Public Policy
Credits: 1.0 -3.0 [max 6.0]
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Selected topics.
POL 8260 - Topics in Political Theory
Credits: 3.0 [max 6.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Readings and research in special topics or problems.
SOC 8090 - Topics in Sociology
Credits: 1.5 -3.0 [max 12.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Topics specified in Class Schedule. prereq: instr consent
SOC 8190 - Topics in Law, Crime, and Deviance
Credits: 3.0 [max 9.0]
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Every Fall
Advanced topics in law, crime, and deviance. Social underpinnings of legal/illegal behavior and of legal systems.
SOC 8211 - The Sociology of Race & Racialization
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Major theoretical debates. Classic and contemporary theoretical approaches to studying U.S. race relations; contemporary and historical experiences of specific racial and ethnic groups.