Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) at UC Merced is a dynamic intersection of research and activism. We are situated in California’s Central Valley, where narratives about the rich agricultural landscape mask the politico-economic geographies of prisons, food deserts, indigenous dispossession, and im/migrant displacements. From this context, our CRES program centralizes the histories, experiences, and resistance of marginalized communities. It offers an interdisciplinary, intersectional, and comparative/relational study of race, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, and class that connect our local/regional dynamics with global formations of race and power.

Drawing upon and building on the long tradition of ethnic studies along with cutting-edge curricula from CRES programs at other research institutions and emergent high school programs, our CRES program centers knowledge, community, and social justice in our approach to research, teaching, and collaborations. CRES is devoted to creative, conceptual, and empirical research; critical pedagogy; collaborations with a broad group of associated/affiliated faculty; and social justice projects developed with and for marginalized communities for institutional and social change (borrowed from UC San Diego’s Ethnic Studies Department). We work to dismantle white supremacist, settler colonial, anti-Black, capitalist, and heteropatriarchal logics and structures in order to reimagine a society that can provide justice and care for all.

Dr. Christina Baker

Associate Professor and Chair of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

Your donation directly supports UC Merced's Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) program.