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

• Introduction to Ethnic Studies (ASCCC OERI, Fischer, Espinoza-Kulick, Acevedo, Hodges, Leal, and Cheshire) (CC BY-NC)

  This textbook examines the development of Ethnic Studies as an academic discipline and provides relevant education centering narratives, philosophies, histories, and cultures of Black Indigenous People of Color, while countering eurocentrism and white supremacy. The content includes a comparative approach covering Africana/African American/Black Studies, Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies, Chicanx/Latinx Studies, and American Indian/Native American Studies.

• Black Lives Matter Collective Storytelling Project (University of Washington, 2021) (CC BY-NC-ND)

  Student reflections on race, racism, and racial justice. A University of Washington, Tacoma cross-course collaboration.

• Latinxs and Black Lives Matter: Latinx Talk Mini-Reader #1 (Amador and Delgadillo, 2021) (CC BY-NC-ND)

  Latinx Talk Mini-Readers offers a curated selection of essays and creative work followed by discussion questions relevant to the readings. These mini-readers are made for classroom and community use.

Primary Sources

• San Francisco State College Strike Collection (San Francisco State University DIVA Project) (Licenses vary.) Collections include primary sources, newspaper coverage, photos, protest signs, and TV coverage of the San Francisco State College Strike for Ethnic Studies in 1968-1969.

• Digital Public Library of America/Digital Public Library in OER Commons is a database of sources with creative commons licenses. The Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are “primary source collections exploring topics in history, literature, and culture developed by educators — complete with teaching guides for class use.” You can search by topic or explore one of the subject areas listed below. All resources are licensed CC BY.
  • Early Chinese Immigration to the US.
  • The Black Power Movement
  • The American Indian Movement, 1968-1978
  • American Indian Boarding Schools
  • Immigration and Americanization, 1880-1930  
  • Japanese American Internment during World War II
  • Mexican Labor and World War II: The Bracero Program
• Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically significant artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Some sources in Calisphere are not openly licensed. The collections in Calisphere have been digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state. Discover over two million photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more. For Ethnic Studies disciplinary content, visit Calisphere: Ethnic Studies Library.

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

• Race, Crime and Citizenship in American Law (Ghachem) – MIT Open Courseware (CC BY-NC)
  This seminar “looks at key issues in the historical development and current state of modern American criminal justice, with an emphasis on its relationship to citizenship, nationhood, and race/ethnicity.”
• Race and Racism (Sally Haslanger) – MIT Open Courseware (CC BY-NC-SA)
  This course in MIT’s Topics in Social Theory and Practice series explores race and racism in the United States; the courseware includes a syllabus, list of readings (some linked), lecture notes, and assignments.

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.”

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

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.

• Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience (Joshua Farrington et al., 2019)

  Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience (Joshua Farrington et al., 2019) in LibreTexts (CC BY-NC)
  This text gives instructors, students, and general readers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of African Americans’ cultural and political history, economic development, artistic expressiveness, and religious and philosophical worldviews in a critical framework.

• African American History (Lumen) in LibreTexts (Licenses vary.)

  This resource provides historical material that offers context for African American experiences, ranging from African heritage to the days following the end of legalized chattel slavery in the United States in the Reconstruction era.

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

• Cree: Language of the Plains / nēhiyawēwin: paskwāwi-pīkiskwēwin (Jean L. Okimāsis, 2018) – BC Open Collection by BC Campus (CC BY-NC-ND)

  Cree: Language of the Plains is a comprehensive educational resource, offering a broad range of learning materials that is easily accessible to Cree language learners. This collection includes an updated and redesigned Cree language textbook, Cree language audio labs, and a Cree language workbook.

• Pulling Together: A Guide for Researchers, Hiłḵ̓ala (Biin, Canada, Chenoweth, and Neel, 2021) (CC BY-NC)

  This resource is part of a learning series for public post-secondary staff to begin or supplement ways to Indigenize the institution and professional practice.

• Cree Dictionary of Mathematical Terms with Visual Examples (Sardarli and Swan, 2022) (CC BY)

  Provides Cree equivalents of 176 mathematics terms and their definitions in English. The visual examples mainly contain Indigenous elements. The Dictionary was reviewed by Elders, Indigenous Knowledge Keepers, and Cree-speaking educators.

• ECHO: Ethnographic, Cultural and Historical Overview of Yukon’s First Peoples (Castillo, Schreyer, and Southwick, 2020) (CC BY-NC-ND)

  ECHO is a handbook that provides the most current research pertaining to Yukon First Nations peoples. Topics include archaeology, ethnology, lifeways, relationships with newcomers (in the past and currently), the arts, and modern-day land claims. The volume also includes interviews with research collaborators who discuss the importance of community-based research.

• Exploring Indigenous Foods and Food Sovereignty (Jonathan, Maracle, and Wild, 2020) (CC BY-NC-ND)

  This OER examines food sovereignty and food experiences in Haudenosaunee communities to explore ways of upholding our Haudenosaunee responsibilities to the land and enhancing the local practice of food sovereignty. Research findings revealed that local education about food sovereignty, Indigenous foods, and practices must be achieved to promote these concepts in the lives of Six Nations of the Grand River community members.

• Global Femicide: Indigenous Women and Girls Torn from Our Midst, 2nd Edition (Anderson et al., 2021) (CC BY-NC)

  Laying Canadian stories alongside the global phenomenon of femicide in other colonized countries such as Mexico and Guatemala, this book underscores the common, interlocking effects of racism and sexism on Indigenous women. Family members, scholars and researchers, artists, activists, and policy-makers provide their decade-long perspectives, providing testimony and evidence that sexualized and racialized violence is not only a product of historic colonization but continues to manifest in entrenched systems of colonization and global femicide.

• Healing and Reconciliation Through Education (Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre, 2019) (CC BY-SA)

  This resource is focused on teaching the history of the colonial legacy of Residential Schools, with an emphasis on exploring the unique history of the Shingwauk Residential School, which operated in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. This project builds upon decades of archival research and data collection, including the recording of oral histories, under the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre’s (SRSC) mandate of ‘sharing, healing, and learning.’ ‘Realizing Healing and Reconciliation through Education’ is designed to increase the capacity of the SRSC to educate local, regional, and national audiences about the history of Residential Schools.

• Nanihtsulyaz’  int’en (Do things gently) ʔes zuminstwáx kt (We take care of one another): The Role of Indigenous Elders in Student Mental Health and Wellness in the BC. Post-Secondary Education Environment (Devine et al., 2022)

  (CC BY-NC-ND) This illustrated booklet shows the holistic ways that Indigenous Elders support student mental health and wellness in the BC post-secondary system. It includes quotes from Elders and reflection questions to help readers think about the many ways that Elders’ presence, knowledge, and wisdom enrich the learning environment.

• Indigenous Information Literacy (Chong et al., 2022) (CC BY-NC-ND)

  This book outlines best principles for working with Indigenous print and oral sources in academic research. Topics include evaluating Indigenous print sources for credibility and authenticity, finding Indigenous authors, and respectfully working with Elders.

• Indigenous Teaching Resources: Students Collection (Bouvier et al., 2022) (CC BY-NC-ND)

  A compilation of resources to support Indigenous education initiatives. Includes picture book and chapter book used for K – 12 classrooms. Activities to support mathematics and science-based learning. A portion of resources is also dedicated to inter-generational learning.

• Shingwauk Narratives: Sharing Residential School History (Lemay, Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre) (CC BY-NC)

  The Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC), holds letter books of the first principal of the Shingwauk Residential School, Rev. Edward F. Wilson, and the fourth principal Rev. George L. King. The letters range in date from 1875-1904 and include a wealth of information about the early history of Shingwauk and Wawanosh. Descriptions and links to digitized versions of the ten books included in this collection can be found on the Algoma Archives website.

Primary Sources

• Public Domain Native American Literature (Various Authors) – Amherst College (Public Domain (CC0))
  This collection includes digitized books from Amherst College’s Younghee Kim-Wait (AC 1982) Pablo Eisenberg Native American Literature Collection, comprising more than 100 public domain works by or about Native Americans.

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

• New Directions in Chicanx and Latinx Studies (ASCCC OERI, González, Espinoza-Kulick, Moreno, Arévalo, and Alvarez) (CC BY-NC)

  A comprehensive, peer-reviewed introductory textbook written by scholars from the California Community Colleges and California State University. The content, spanning ten chapters, is guided by intersectional, transnational, and relational frameworks that build on current and emergent work in Chicanx and Latinx Studies.

• Environmentalisms in Latinx Studies: Latinx Talk Mini-Reader #2 (Jiménez and Delgadillo, 2022) (CC BY-NC-ND)

  A collection of essays that includes essential Latinx ideas, perspectives, and practices to promote environmental sustainability written by a variety of researchers, writers, and poets.

• Latinx Media: An Open-Access Textbook (Navitski and Marsh, University of Georgia)

  This is a copyrighted, open-access textbook. This open-access textbook explores multiple forms of media and unpacks the relationship between media and identity, history, and culture in the context of Latinx communities.

• The Chicanos: As We See Ourselves (Trejo et al., 1979) (CC BY-NC-ND)

  Thirteen Chicanx scholars draw upon their personal experiences and expertise to paint a vivid, colorful portrait of what it means to be Chicanx, including political experiences, bicultural education, and history. The book provides a detailed account and definition of the Chicano Movement in 1979.

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.

• Latin American History and Culture (Anadeli Bencomo, 2022) (CC BY-NC-SA)

  This book contains content on colonialism, regional variations in Latin America, revolution, and ethnic identity development.

• Conocimientos Ancestrales: Descolonizando el Conocimiento Dentro de las Tradiciones Afro-Indígenas (Reyes-Santos and Lara)

  This is a copyrighted, open access text. This comprehensive investigation into decolonization among Afro-Indigenous populations examines the lives and practices of healers as well as the medicinal benefits of these traditions.

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

This page last updated December 11, 2023.