Alumni Testimonials
There are a wide range of career paths that students who have majored in CRES decide to embark on. Alumni in this field go on to work in law, social work, community organizing, politics, journalism, and so much more. Here are some of our CRES Alumni to share their experiences:
Emilio Elias-Marchevsky '25 (he/they)
Major: CRES-Anthropology
Thesis Title: At the Heart of the Beat: A Critical Ethnography and Semiotics of Afro-Uruguayan Candombe
Current Position: Curatorial Intern, Clockshop (a Los Angeles based arts and culture organization)
How has a CRES Education impacted your career/life?: “As I'm about a month out from graduation, this is a difficult question. CRES has served as a source of inspiration and as an important tool to ground my theoretical interests within Anthropology and Cultural Studies to the contexts left out of frame or treated solely as sites of scientific inquiry. Rather, CRES treats race and ethnicity as both performative and affective, tools of selfhood and of subjugation. Beyond informing my view of the world, a CRES education has helped me to develop a critical framework for understanding how Los Angeles' urban spaces are formed and exist dialogically between diverse ethnic and cultural communities. Complex systems of power, undergirded by processes of racialization, continue to enact themselves as we inhabit spaces built upon these systems. These are tools which are very important as I have entered into my current internship at Clockshop.”
Favorite CRES Course: My favorite CRES class taken at Reed has to be Charlene Makley's ANTH/CRES 411: The Politics of World-Making: Semiotics, Pragmatics, Performance. A special mention to Radhika Natarajan's History/CRES 315: Race, Ethnicity, and Empire. These courses helped me find my key theoretical influences and were both incredibly well-organized and taught.
Kenna McCauley ‘25 (she/her)
Major: CRES-History
Thesis Title: ‘Our History, Our Way’: The Dynamics of Race and Ethnicity in the Social Movements of the Hawaiian Renaissance
Current Position: Sustainability and Environmental Justice Scholar, 杏吧原创
How has a CRES Education impacted your career/life?: “Studying CRES has shown me how to think critically about the world we live in, and how to ask questions that can foreground new perspectives and ways of thinking. It has given me a lot of respect for the people that have come before me, and taught me that it is my responsibility to make the world better for the people who come after. I use what I learned in CRES to shape the work I do with Sustainability at Reed, making sure that I am listening to many perspectives on climate justice instead of only focusing on one.”
Favorite CRES Course: CRES 381 - Race and Ethnicity in the United States Since 1865
Student Work Highlights
CRES students produce a variety of work in their classes, whether that be informational websites, ethnographies, posters, zines, papers, art pieces, etc. Here are examples of work that a CRES course may promote:
“Family and Gender in Empire” - Final Creative Project
Course Title: History 315 - Defining and Defying Difference: Race, Ethnicity, and Empire
Project Description: Students made a zine that highlighted the ways in which colonialism and empire effected gender and family in the British Empire. This project explored ideas of English paternalism, Native femininity, and non-normative family structures. This zine uses mix of collage and hand-drawn images to accompany the text. It was designed to be an accessible and digestable introduction into the subject that would inspire readers to look further into the topic.
"At the Heart of the Beat: A Critical Ethnography and Semiotics of Afro-Uruguayan Candombe" - Introduction from CRES-Anthropology Senior Thesis
Course Title: CRES 470 - Senior Thesis (Emilio Elias-Marchevsky)
Project Description: Elias-Marchevsky explores the art of Candombe, an Afro-Uruguayan musical percussion practice, and what this style means to people from different positionalities. The thesis explores three different genres that use this style: Candombe Callejero (Street Candombe), Música Popular Uruguaya (Uruguayan Popular Music), and Candombe-Fusión. At once inextricably linked to its imagined past in Africa and to the contemporary Uruguayan public, Candombe is a discursive field through which Afro-Uruguayans fight for recognition and valorization, and through which their subjugated position is broken down and reconstituted.
"‘Our History, Our Way’: The Dynamics of Race and Ethnicity in the Social Movements of the Hawaiian Renaissance" - Second Chapter from CRES-History Senior Thesis
Course Title: CRES 470 - Senior Thesis (Kenna McCauley)
Project Description: McCauley explores the tensions that arose between racial and ethnic groups in social movements of the Hawaiian Renaissance in the 1970s. Disagreements arose over who should participate in a movement that emphasized Indigenous sovereignty, and these were often sparked by haoles (white people) recreating systems of domination within the movements that sought to dismantle them. The second chapter focuses on specific movements during the Hawaiian Renaissance: Save Our Surf (SOS), the voyage of Hōkūle'a, and the Kalama Valley Occupation. The chapter explores how decreations of systems of domination, like settler colonialism, bred tensions and resentment in these movements.