Princeton - News - Princeton Works to Make Study of Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Diversity Integral to Undergraduate Program

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Contact: Justin Harmon (609) 258-5732
Date: January 8, 1997

Princeton Works to Make Study of Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Diversity Integral to Undergraduate Program

PRINCETON, N.J. -- An effort to make the study of racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity an integral part of undergraduate education at Princeton University continues through initiatives to highlight course opportunities for students, to encourage the development of appropriate curriculum, and to identify and recruit faculty with relevant scholarly and teaching expertise.

A newly published pamphlet focuses attention on the array of courses in Princeton's undergraduate curriculum "that explore racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity, or that focus on cross-cultural encounter." Race, Ethnicity, and Cross-Cultural Encounter: A Guide to Undergraduate Courses grows out of the work of the 1995-96 Task Force on Diversity, a group of faculty and students led by Professor of Religion Albert J. Raboteau, which also set in motion a number of related initiatives.

The pamphlet lists 70 courses offered in the fall and spring terms of 1996-97 in two dozen departments and programs, as well as 33 additional courses in the permanent curriculum that are not offered in 1996-97. "While each year's offerings will vary somewhat," it notes, "the three lists together are illustrative of the kinds of courses a student might expect to find in the curriculum in any given year."

The pamphlet is being distributed to all freshman and sophomore students in their residential colleges, and is available to juniors and seniors at academic offices and various other campus facilities. It is being sent to selected faculty and administrators, the Graduate School, various alumni groups, and others. The pamphlet also will serve as an informational resource for use by the Admission Office with prospective students.

Charged with helping to advance the University's efforts to implement recommendations of the 1993-94 Committee on Diversity and Liberal Education, the Raboteau Task Force also undertook a number of other projects that will come to fruition this year. Beyond that, the Task Force charted a course for an array of initiatives that will figure importantly in the next stages of this work.

The accomplishments thus far include the following:

- Of five new courses whose development was supported by the Task Force, four are being offered this year: in Sociology, Professor Miguel Centeno's "The Sociology of Latinos in the United States"; in the Freshman Seminar Program, Professor Gordon Moskowitz's "The Psychology of Stereotyping and Prejudice" (which may later develop into a regular departmental offering in Psychology); in American Studies, Professor William Howarth's "Race and Region: Native and African-American Writings"; and in English, Professor Jeff Nunokawa's "Readings in Asian American Literature: Diaspora, Domesticity, and Desire." A second course by Professor Nunokawa, provisionally titled "Asian American Themes of Invasion," is planned for 1997-98.

- A case statement prepared by the Task Force provides the grounding for the efforts of the Development Office to raise funds for the initiative in the comparative study of American society and cultures that is one of the objectives in the 250th Anniversary Campaign.

- The new 250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education, announced by President Shapiro at Alumni Day in February 1996 as one of the three Presidential Teaching Initiatives to whose funding he would devote particular personal attention in the first year of the Anniversary Campaign, identifies "Comparative American Cultures and International Studies" as one of the four high-priority areas in which grants are now available to faculty for curriculum development. In the first round of competition for awards last spring, two of the successful proposals addressed directly our desire to enhance the study of Comparative American Cultures. One, the major overhaul of the popular American literature course, LIT 132 (a project co-sponsored by the Task Force), will yield a new course, "Comparative American Literatures," to be taught by Professor William Gleason, beginning this spring. A second project, involving the significant rethinking of the curriculum of the American Studies Program, should result next year in a substantially reconfigured core course to replace AMS 201-202. "We hope and expect to fund additional proposals for curriculum development in Comparative American Cultures in subsequent rounds of this now-annual competition," said Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel.

- Planning is currently underway for a multidisciplinary, team-taught "flagship" course for the initiative in the comparative study of American society and cultures. Lodged in the American Studies Program, the course would include lectures and colloquia with distinguished visitors, and might serve as the focal point for a workshop (or workshops) for faculty and graduate students on teaching about comparative American cultures, as well as on the pedagogical issues involved in teaching diverse student groups.

Said Dean Malkiel: "Princeton's ability to realize the aspirations of the Diversity Committee and the Raboteau Task Force depends directly on having an outstanding group of senior and junior faculty members in a variety of fields whose scholarship and teaching enrich our understanding of the many different peoples and cultures within the Americas and across the continents. Recent appointments and searches currently underway are expected to add significantly to the continuing strength and increasing range of Princeton's faculty and curriculum in these areas."

As has been announced previously, the search for a senior scholar in Latino studies culminated last spring in the appointment of Alejandro Portes as a professor in the Department of Sociology. Professor Portes is a nationally renowned specialist in immigration and ethnicity, social change in Latin America, and economic sociology. At the same time, a major faculty appointment in the Council of the Humanities and the Program in Creative Writing, also made last spring, will bring to Princeton the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa. Professors Portes and Komunyakaa are both scheduled to begin their teaching in the fall of 1997.

In addition, the History Department, completing searches which began last year, has appointed two new junior faculty members: Emmanuel Kreike, a specialist in African history, with particular emphasis on peasant societies and rural ecology in Namibia, Mozambique, and South Africa, who will join the faculty this February; and Richard Turits, a specialist in modern Caribbean history, who will begin his teaching next September.

The search for a specialist in Asian American studies, which began last spring, is progressing, and two new searches are currently underway in African-American history and African-American literature.

Additional copies of the pamphlet are available upon request in the office of the Dean of the College, 403 West College.