Fox Attacks African Americans

Although I finally finished with my qualfying exam questions, I still have some preparing to do before my actual exam next Tuesday. They'll be asking me different aspects of my project, but also about the broader intellectual terrain of Ethnic Studies, and how well I know it and can teach it. Since my intellectual journey is different than most in the department (coming from Guam and Chamorro Studies and Micronesian Studies), I'm not really familiar with much of the books and conversations that comprise the foundation of Ethnic Studies. Pues bula na debi di bei taitai antes di i mamaila na Mates.

For those of you interested, my exam questions were:

1. How have questions of race and ethnicity challenged such disciplines as history, sociology, anthropology, literature, and political science and how has work in Ethnic Studies influenced those readings and generated new perspectives and practices? Choose one discipline and characterize the predominant ways in which questions of race and ethnicity have been treated over time. Then point to how scholars in Ethnic Studies have critiqued and transformed these approaches.

2. Critically outline and evaluate the ways that recent studies of indigenous identity, politics, theory, methods, and aesthetics have (re)shaped thinking in Ethnic Studies. Given this review, identify areas of difficulty and promise for future research.

3. Your dissertation project engages the fields of “Pacific studies” and “cultural studies.” What methodological antecedents can be utilized to construct a grounded, rooted form of cultural studies? How or what might a grounded, rooted cultural studies contribute to Pacific Islander projects of decolonization and sovereignty struggles? And what might Pacific Islander projects of decolonization offer cultural studies?

I had to pick two of these three, and I decided to pick the second two, since they are much more in line with my interests and the sort of work and conversations I want to take part in.

I don't have much time to post today, so I just thought I'd share this, which had the excellent effect of both pissing me off and motivated me to keep writing and keep working. Lana, gof ti ya-hu Fox News, puru ha' dinagi, chinatli'e yan racism.

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