2025 Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Research Symposium

2025 Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Research Symposium

by Keith Miyake Announcements Events

Let Me Define My Terms: An Undergraduate Research Symposium

May 19, 2025

UCR Alumni Center

This symposium will showcase how undergraduate students are conducting meaningful research on race, gender, and sexuality. It empowers students to effectively communicate the significance of their work within academic circles and, crucially, within the broader context of American society. Ten undergraduate participants will present original research or creative activities related to ethnic studies on the topic of their choosing.

This one-day symposium will feature a keynote speaker (TBA) and three moderated panels of undergraduate research papers.

 

Applications now open for the 2025 Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Research Symposium

 

UCR students of any major are encouraged to apply. There will be a $500 stipend awarded to all presenters. Applications are due March 28, 2025.

To apply, you must complete the application form linked above. In addition to your basic information, you will be asked to submit the title of your proposed presentation and a 250–350 word abstract. The abstract is a short description of what your proposed symposium presentation will be about. This should include the topic of research, some brief context, the questions or problem you will address, your central argument or thesis, the significance of your research, and the conclusions you will arrive at. It is alright for you not to know exactly what your argument or conclusions might be in the final presentation, but you should provide as much information as possible. A strong symposium paper will include a thesis, supporting evidence, conclusion, and larger significance. Because they are written with an intention of sharing with a live audience, it is helpful to read the essay aloud to ensure it follows the conventions of oral presentation. ­­­­

 

Colloquium: “Sleepless: Racial patterns of Sleep Hygiene in a County Jail” by Michael Lawrence Walker

Colloquium: “Sleepless: Racial patterns of Sleep Hygiene in a County Jail” by Michael Lawrence Walker

by Keith Miyake Events

Join the UCR Department of Ethnic Studies for our colloquium speaker series:

“Sleepless: Racial patterns of Sleep Hygiene in a County Jail”

By Michael Lawrence Walker

Monday, February 24
1:00-2:00 p.m.
INTS 1109 (note the room change)

Problems associated with sleep hygiene are among the more unexamined issues in carceral organizations. We know that poor sleep hygiene is associated with increased risks for developing mood disorders, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and other physiological problems. In this study, I use ethnographic data from a Southern California county jail system to show: (a) poor sleep hygiene is endemic penal living; (b) jail mental health staff were ill-equipped to address the interplay of sleep hygiene and mental health for penal residents; (3) the jail as an organizational setting patterned resident dreams into themes; and (4) carceral organizations stratify poor sleep hygiene across racial groups. I offer the outline of a sensitizing scheme for the sociology of dreams.

 

Michael Lawrence Walker earned his Ph.D. in 2014 from the University of California, Riverside. In 2017, he joined the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities where he is the Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in Liberal Arts in the Department of Sociology. He is the author of Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail, which won the 2022 C. Wright Mills Book Award and the Charles H. Cooley Award for Best Recent Book. Walker’s research focuses on race relations, social exchange, punishment, identities, and time. His current project is a book length examination of the socioemotional landscape of law enforcement work.

Colloquium: “The Mer-Warrior: A Fantastic Afro-Nostalgic” by Jalondra A. Davis

Colloquium: “The Mer-Warrior: A Fantastic Afro-Nostalgic” by Jalondra A. Davis

by Keith Miyake Events

Join the UCR Department of Ethnic Studies for our colloquium speaker series:

“The Mer-Warrior: A Fantastic Afro-Nostalgic”

By Jalondra A. Davis

Monday, February 10
1:00-2:00 p.m.
INTN 3023

In contrast to mainstream representations of the mermaid as an innocent, hyperfeminine girl-culture waif, a hypersexualized, commercialized object, or, more rarely, a tempting, predatory, carnivorous siren, Black mermaid stories, narratives, and performers offer entirely different dimensions to this fantastical figure that are remarkably consistent across literary, visual, and other popular culture. Building upon Badia Ahad-Legardy’s concept of afro-nostalgia, this presentation will focus on the mermaid as a warrior figure, and the way in which Black storytellers and creatives center the kinds of histories usually used to exclude blackness from fantasy landscapes—captivity, enslavement, and ongoing racial violence—as actually especially entitling Black communities to mermaid stories.

 

Jalondra A. Davis is an Assistant Professor of English at UC Riverside, has published on speculative fiction in various venues, including Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Science Fiction Studies, Misrepresentations of Black Womanhood, Routledge Anthology of Co-Futurisms, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Her monograph manuscript, Merfolk and Black Being in Water, analyzes the historically specific worldbuilding of Black literature, art, and performance featuring human-aquatic hybrids, with a focus on how such narratives interrogate Western modernity, humanism, and the Anthropocene. A current Hellman Society of Scholars Fellow with an Ethnic Studies Ph.D. from UCR, she also hosts the Merwomanist Podcast.
Colloquium: Indigenous Futures: Oaxaqueñx Youth Encuentro and New Voices in the California Central Valley by Nancy Morales

Colloquium: Indigenous Futures: Oaxaqueñx Youth Encuentro and New Voices in the California Central Valley by Nancy Morales

by Keith Miyake Events

Join the Ethnic Studies Department for our colloquium speaker series:

“Indigenous Futures: Oaxaqueñx Youth Encuentro and New Voices in the California Central Valley”

By Nancy Morales

Monday, December 2, 1:00–2:00 pm in INTN 3023

Based on a five-year Native ethnography with participant observation of fifteen Oaxaqueñx Youth Encuentro events, and twenty-four interviews with 1.5 (U.S.-raised) and second generations (U.S.-born) of Mixtec and Zapotec women and queer youth, Morales argues for more expansive definitions of Indigenous governance, such as tequio (community labor) to account for the political participation of Indigenous women and Indigiqueer youth that challenge static nationalist notions of Indigeneity.

Nancy Morales is an Indigenous (Zapotec) feminist scholar-activist and Native ethnographer. She earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara in June 2023 and is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at UC Santa Cruz. She is currently working on a short documentary and book manuscript, Oaxacan Pride: Women and Indigiqueer Youth’s Struggles for Sovereignty.

You can download a PDF flyer here.

Recent and Upcoming Art Shows featuring Prof. Gerald Clarke

Recent and Upcoming Art Shows featuring Prof. Gerald Clarke

by Keith Miyake Events Faculty News

2024 has been a busy year for Professor Gerald Clarke! Here are some of Professor Clarke’s recent and upcoming shows:

Gerald Clarke: The Door is Open (May 24 – September 1, 2024, Breck Create, Breckenridge, CO)

Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees (September 7 – December 29, 2024, Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA)

Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art (January 12 – July 13, 2025, PST ART, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA)

 

Professor Clarke will also be giving a lecture in October:

Portland Monuments Project Symposium (October 11 – 12, 2024, Converge 45, Portland, OR)

 

Prof. Clarke’s Artist Statement (via Breck Create)

I aspire not to romanticize the subjects or content of my work. I strive to “keep it real” and have found that my best works are inspired by my personal experiences. Beer cans, branding irons, and gourd rattles represent aspects of my reality. These materials reflect who I am and not how the mainstream might understand the contemporary Native American experience. They represent my community as well: a community that struggles with various issues but that also laughs, loves, and continues to evolve.

While my work may not appear “traditional,” it is part of a continuation of creative responses to the world that the Cahuilla have exercised since ancient times. I believe the strict adherence to traditional materials and authentic forms has been forced onto Indigenous expression by Euro-American belief systems that view art and culture through a monetary lens. The result is a narrow conception of Native American art that imposes an eighteenth-century aesthetic and transforms it into a commodity.

As you view my work, I ask that you do not simply compare or contrast it to “traditional Native American art,” but that you understand my work exists within a spectrum of Indigenous expression that is simultaneously ancient and contemporary. I’m proud and humbled to contribute to the Indigenous Intellectual Tradition. I am not simply a contemporary artist that happens to be Indian. I am a Native American artist. I am a Cahuilla artist.