The Major in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora Studies (RCD) provides a rigorous curriculum for the critical, comparative, and interdisciplinary study of societies and cultures of the Americas and around the world. This major connects the studies of race, ethnicity, indigeneity, colonialism, empire, transnational migration, and diaspora across national, hemispheric, transnational, and global frames. The RCD Studies Major prioritizes the knowledge drawn from struggles for social justice and political sovereignty, with attention to class, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, caste, and other kinds of social difference and hierarchy.

The Major draws on insights and methodologies of multiple disciplines, yoking together the interdisciplinary fields of Critical Race Studies, Critical Indigeneity Studies, and Postcolonial Studies of the Global South, and involves deep inquiry into the contestations, resistances, contradictions, and dialectics of social power, and the Indigenous, Black, and Global South futures that emerge as a result.

Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora Studies provide a vantage point onto society that connects national, hemispheric, transnational, and global frameworks. It serves Tufts University’s central commitment to civic engagement, preparing students to ethically share in the work of social transformation on local, national, and global levels. The RCD Studies Major will prepare students to negotiate their place as informed participants in and leaders of progressive social change.

Sample Classes:

• Childhood across Cultures
• Race and Ethnicity
• Colonialism, Race, and Immigration in Contemporary Film
• Research Seminar: Black Power/Red Power
• Themes in Native American and Indigenous Studies