The Big Names in Ethnic Studies
While Ethnic Studies departments and colleges were established on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, Ethnic Studies as a theoretical perspective can be traced back to an African American sociologist, civil rights activist, and historian by the name of W.E.B. Du Bois.
Du Bois definitely rocked the boat back in the day. He was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, in 1895. In 1903, he published a book called The Souls of Black Folk, which addressed the experience of African Americans. In this book, Du Bois wrote about the idea of "double-consciousness," which became foundational to the field of Ethnic Studies.
Once Ethnic Studies was established in the late 1960s and early 1970s, African American scholars looked to Du Bois for some insights into what to do with their new field. Pretty soon, African American Studies became one of the major subfields of Ethnic Studies.
Some of the most important figures in African American Studies include cultural historian Cornell West, literary critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and bell hooks (rockin' the no caps), who writes about race and gender. While Toni Morrison is most famous as a novelist, she also wrote an important book of criticism called Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992), in which she analyzes the way that white American authors write about blackness and African Americans.
In Latino/a Studies, Renato Rosaldo, an anthropologist, has written about how "objective" knowledge is often framed from a particular racial, cultural, and class perspective. This idea became very important to Ethnic Studies scholars, who like to show how knowledge presented as "truth" is often not so neutral after all. Rosaldo also helped develop the concept of "cultural citizenship." Gloria Anzaldua's 1987 book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, introduced the concept of the "border" as central to Chicano/a Studies.
The big players in Asian American Studies include Ronald Takaki, a historian who wrote Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (1989), a book about the experiences of Asian Americans. Philip Q. Yang, a sociologist, writes about Asian immigration to the U.S., but he's also into talking about Ethnic Studies as a whole, like in his book Ethnic Studies: Issues and Approaches (2000), a comprehensive overview of the field.
Vine Deloria, Jr.'s 1969 book, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto was formative for to the Native American "Red Power" movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It also helped spur the drive for the establishment of Native American Studies programs in higher education. Clara Sue Kidwell is another scholar who played a big role in helping to establish the field of Native American Studies.