The Consortium currently supports four Research Program Areas:

Intersections, Identities, and Inequalities (Dr. Bonnie Thornton Dill, director)

This program area focuses on the development of theoretical, methodological and pedagogical approaches to the study of intersections of race, gender, class, ethnicity and other dimensions of inequality. It is an interdisciplinary research program area that seeks to elaborate how dimensions of inequality intersect, creating new and distinct social formations. This includes promoting research that contextualizes the lives and experiences of individuals and groups, as well as develops applications of knowledge to human problems. This scholarship embraces a wide range of approaches that permit complex and nuanced explorations. Intersectional analysis is also an effort to move beyond binary or oppositional analyses and toward an understanding of the ways the ideological, political, and economic systems of power construct and reconstruct one another. An intersectional approach, grounded in lived experience, provides the intellectual foundation for the pursuit of social justice.

Health and Social Well Being of Low Income Women, Children, and Families (Dr. Ruth E. Zambrana, director)

This program area seeks to build a more comprehensive and ethnic-specific scientific knowledge base on the effects of the intersection of poverty, institutional barriers, and other non-medical factors that contribute to adverse health status. This approach takes into account the influence of race, gender, and ethnicity to promote responsiveness in the development of future health interventions.

Material Culture/Visual Culture (Drs. Mary Corbin Sies and Angel David Nieves, co-directors)

The Material Culture/Visual Culture (MC/VC) program area is engaged in research on African American material and visual culture, and more generally on the material and visual culture of marginalized subgroups of North America. The group seeks to publicize the value of material and visual evidence for understanding the cultures of everyday life of American subcultures and to foster an environment in which scholars from different backgrounds can explore and refine research and theories for working with material and visual culture.

Schooling, Ethnic Communities and International Perspectives. (Dr. Lory J. Dance, director).

This Research Program Area is in the early stages of development. Led by sociologist Dr. Lory J. Dance, this area focuses on the uses of qualitative methodologies in the study of education in ethnic communities in the United States and internationally. The group also houses the Qualitative Research Interest Group (QRIG; co-directed by Drs. Lory J. Dance and Annette Lareau), which sponsored a colloquium series in fall 2005 on funding qualitative research projects.

Other Activities:

CRGE Interdisciplinary Scholarship Program (CrISP). The Consortium administers a two-year graduate fellowship program designed to develop national and international leaders in the research and scholarship of intersectional analysis. CrISP Scholars conduct research at the Consortium and are mentored by CRGE faculty members.

Intersectional Research Database. CRGE is home to the world’s first online database devoted exclusively to intersectional research. The Intersectional Research Database (IRD), which was launched in summer 2005, currently features over 100 annotations of articles and books on intersectional issues. The IRD is updated weekly and will soon include audio, visual images, video and sound.

CRGE Graduate Colloquium. CRGE holds a monthly colloquium for graduate students that focuses on various topics related to intersectionality and social justice. Graduate students from across the disciplines participate through attendance and by sharing their own work at the end of each semester. Recent colloquium topics have dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; interdisciplinary job talks; intersections and sexualities; and the commodification of Black youth, which was led by Dr. Patricia Hill Collins.

Research Interest Groups (RIGS). RIGS are smaller research groups, each sponsored by a Research Program Area. RIGS are collaborative, interdisciplinary groups that conduct intersectional research. The RIGS aim to create groups that can assist their members in preparing and submitting proposals for federal, state, and private sector research grants in CRGE Research Program Areas.