The Origins and Development of Ethnic Studies in Utah: Race, Religion, and Resistance, 1969-1986

• In Event: Democratic Reimaginings: Education as a Site of Justice

Abstract

Historians have revealed the origins and development of Ethnic Studies programs in higher education during the 1960s and 1970s in the United States. However, these examinations have tended to focus on elite institutions and institutions of higher education in areas with significant populations of Asian, Black, Latino/a/x, and Indigenous people. Drawing upon archival materials, newspaper articles, and oral history interviews, this paper traces the creation and evolution of the Ethnic Studies program at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. We reveal how, and in what ways, Students and Faculty of Color challenged and contested settler colonialism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness in university classrooms and the surrounding community of Salt Lake City. By understanding the origins and development of Ethnic Studies in a public university of the Intermountain West, this paper helps illuminate the contours of critical pedagogy and curriculum in understudied institutions of higher education.

Authors

• Alexander Hyres, University of Utah

• Brendan Lee, University of Utah