Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration

February 16, 2016

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the establishment of a new center at Yale dedicated to the study of race, indigeneity, and transnational migration. This interdisciplinary center—as described in an announcement sent to the university community in November—will advance intellectual work related to ethnic studies fields; intersectional race, gender, and sexuality research; and Native and diasporic communities, both in the United States and in other countries. By supporting such scholarship, the center in part responds to our call for a more integrated, more open, and more inclusive university, one in which students, faculty, researchers, and others connect across academic units.

We anticipate that the center will serve as the new home of the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Program. In the near term, the center will sponsor summer research fellowship opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students at Yale, as well as a postdoctoral associate who will research and teach at Yale next year. Details about these opportunities will be circulated in the coming weeks. In the longer term, the center will advance teaching and research and bolster Yale’s leadership in key academic fields by sponsoring conferences, colloquia, working groups, and other programming. Beyond Yale, the center will support faculty and students building connections with people and organizations across the country and around the world.

Professor Stephen Pitti (Professor of American Studies and History, Master of Ezra Stiles College) will serve as inaugural director of the center and will chair its implementation committee, which includes Elijah Anderson (William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Sociology), Ned Blackhawk (Professor of American Studies and History), David Blight (Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale), Hazel Carby (Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies, Professor of American Studies, and Director of the Initiative on Race Gender and Globalization), Inderpal Grewal (Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, of American Studies, and of Anthropology), Mary Lui (Professor of American Studies, History, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Master of Timothy Dwight College), and Jock Reynolds (Henry J. Heinz II Director of the Yale University Art Gallery). Deputy Provost Lloyd Suttle will serve as staff liaison to the committee.

We eagerly anticipate the work that will take place in this vital new interdisciplinary center, and we expect that its major programming will begin in fall 2016. The implementation committee will reach out to students, colleagues at Yale, and others to solicit input and share news, but please feel free to contact its members directly in the meantime.

Sincerely,

Peter Salovey
President and Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology

Ben Polak
Provost and William C. Brainard Professor of Economics