Open Educational Resources and Ethnic Studies

Access this page directly using https://tinyurl.com/ESOERsources. The curated list provided here is intended to facilitate faculty selection of an OER text in lieu of a commercial text. If you are aware of additional resources that should be included, please contact us via our general OER e-mail.

This collection was curated by an ASCCC OERI discipline lead. A comprehensive list of current discipline leads is available.

Ethnic Studies

Introduction to Ethnic Studies

Texts

Primary Sources

Course Resources

Not all sources below reflect Ethnic Studies disciplinary content, but these sources may be useful in part for instructors looking to create and adapt OER materials for their courses

Resources

  • Writing About Race (Sarah King) – MIT Open Courseware (CC BY-NC-SA)
    “The very notion of what constitutes race remains a complex and evolving question in cultural terms. In this course we will engage this question head-on, reading and writing about issues involving the construction of race and racial identity as reflected from a number of vantage points and via a rich array of voices and genres. Readings will include literary works by such writers as Toni Morrison, Junot Diaz, and Sherman Alexie, as well as perspectives on film and popular culture from figures such as Malcolm Gladwell and Touré.”

Critical Race Theory

Ethnic Studies for Educators

Texts

With the growth of Ethnic Studies in K-12 and higher education, many programs are emphasizing both pedagogical content in Ethnic Studies, and creating professional development opportunities for emerging Ethnic Studies educators. Resources in this section may be appropriate for a specific course like, “Ethnic Studies for Educators,” and may be generally useful for Ethnic Studies faculty, instructors, and administrators.

  • Ethnic studies increases longer-run academic engagement and attainment (Sade Bonilla, Thomas S. Dee, and Emily K. Penner, 2021) – PNAS (CC BY)
    Increased interest in anti-racist education has motivated the rapidly growing but politically contentious adoption of ethnic studies (ES) courses in US public schools. A long-standing rationale for ES courses is that their emphasis on culturally relevant and critically engaged content (e.g., social justice, anti-racism, stereotypes, contemporary social movements) has potent effects on student engagement and outcomes. However, the quantitative evidence supporting this claim is limited. In this preregistered regression-discontinuity study, we examine the longer-run impact of a grade 9 ES course offered in the San Francisco Unified School District. Our key confirmatory finding is that assignment to this course significantly increased the probability of high school graduation among students near the grade 8 2.0 grade point average (GPA) threshold used for assigning students to the course. Our exploratory analyses also indicate that assignment increased measures of engagement throughout high school (e.g., attendance) as well as the probability of postsecondary matriculation.
  • Ethnic Studies Pedagogies – Open Access (Authors Retain Copyright)
    Ethnic Studies Pedagogies is a new open access online journal committed to critical race, decolonial, and ethnic studies movements, bridging public pedagogies with K-12 contexts. Ethnic Studies Pedagogies provides open access to its content on the principle that knowledge is not a commodity but a human resource which, by making it freely and publicly accessible, can be used to further human learning and the transformation of society. All submissions are reviewed by editorial board members, scholars, together with teachers and community members. Content by scholar-activists, educators, organizers, and students includes scholarly research, archival histories, action research pedagogies, testimonios, photo essays, and art.
  • Facilitating online learning with the 5R’s: Embedding Indigenous pedagogy into the online space (Joanna Lake and Hayley Atkins) – BCcampus Press Books (CC BY)
    This project is a collection of resources for educators and instructors within the K-12 and post-secondary systems to support the adoption of Indigenous pedagogies in online learning environments. The 5R’s of Indigenous pedagogy are relationship, respect, relevance, responsibility, and reciprocity. These 5R’s serve as important reminders for course designers in K-12 and post-secondary educators and benefit all learners. Our resources and reflections address how the 5R’s of Indigenous education and research can be used as best practice to enrich online teaching platforms and remote learning. The positive effect of reciprocal communication, relationship building, and embracing Indigenous knowledge pedagogies in online learning environments extends out into the community and beyond.
  • Frontiers in Education (Various Authors) – Frontiers Publishing Partnerships (Open Access)
    Frontiers in Education is a multidisciplinary, academic journal that focuses on addressing global educational challenges, including policy and practice, to provide thoughtful, research-based insights into improving educational outcomes for all. All articles are open access and instructors may also benefit from the other open access journals available from the Frontiers Publishing Partnerships https://www.frontiersin.org/journals

Additional Resources for Ethnic Studies

African American Studies

Introduction to African American Studies

Texts

The texts included here are appropriate for a history course focusing on the African American experience. Supplemental materials would be needed for an African American Studies, or Black Studies course taught from an Ethnic Studies perspective.

Course Resources

  • Black Matters: Introduction to Black Studies (DeGraff, MIT Open Courseware, 2017) (CC BY-NC-SA) This open-access course provides an introduction to Black Studies, and it includes sample assignments, presentation assignments with examples, lecture videos, and instructor insights. Note that some of the images and sources used within the courses are noted as copyrighted materials.
  • African American History: From Emancipation to the Present (Holloway, Open Yale Courses, 2010) (CC BY-NA-SA)The purpose of this course is to examine the African American experience in the United States from 1863 to the present (2010). Prominent themes include the end of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction, African Americans’ urbanization experiences, and the development of the modern civil rights movement and its aftermath. This open course includes assignments and a reading list that could be adapted for different classroom contexts and updated with more recent material.

Native American Studies

Instructors in Native American Studies may be interested to explore and utilize the Traditional Knowledges Licenses developed by the organization Local Contexts that can be used in addition to or instead of Creative Commons licenses for open-source material. Local Contexts has crafted licensing and labeling practices that are more responsive to local-decision making and Indigenous frameworks for both governance and the sharing of artifacts, resources, and stories.

Many of the sources included listed on this page can be found in the Indigenous Voices Collection from Pressbooks that includes a range of disciplinary perspectives and diverse Indigenous authors. In addition, the BC Campus Indigenization Project in British Columbia has created a Pulling Together Learning series by Indigenous and ally authors that has also facilitated the creation of openly licensed content in Indigenous Studies. While relationship with and content about local Indigenous contexts will vary for different campuses, these sources provide examples that can be used in comparative contexts and offer conceptual perspectives to utilize in context.

Introduction to Native American Studies

Texts

Primary Sources

Asian American Studies

Introduction to Asian American Studies

Text

  • Critical Filipinx American Histories and their Artifacts (Bonus and students, 2020) (CC BY-NC)

    The contents of this online book were created by Prof. Rick Bonus and his students as a final project for a course on “Critical Filipinx American Histories” in the Fall quarter of 2019 at the University of Washington, Seattle campus. In collaboration with the UW Libraries, the UW Burke Museum, and the UW Department of American Ethnic Studies, this book explores and reflects on the relationships between Filipinx American histories and selected artifacts at the Burke Museum. It is a class project that was made possible by the Allen Open Textbook Grant.

Resources

  • Race and Gender in Asian America (Teng, 2006; MIT Open Courseware) (CC BY-NC-SA)
    This seminar examines various issues related to the intersection of race and gender in Asian America, starting with the nineteenth century, but focusing on contemporary issues. Topics covered include racial and gender discourse, the stereotyping of Asian American women and men in the media, Asian American masculinity, Asian American feminisms and their relation to mainstream American feminism, the debate between feminism and ethnic nationalism, gay and lesbian identity, class and labor issues, domestic violence, interracial dating and marriage, and multiracial identity.

Chicanx and Latinx Studies

Introduction to Latina and Latino Studies

Texts in English

Texts in Spanish

These texts may be appropriate for an Introduction to Latina and Latino Studies section for Spanish speakers or one where Spanish is a prerequisite for the course.


Using an OER resource that is missing from the list above? If so, please let us know.

This page last updated May 23, 2024.