The Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality Studies (CRESS), at the University of Oregon, seeks to facilitate intellectual conversation and critical engagement among scholars of race and sexuality. CRESS has three primary goals:

• To bring the fields of sexuality studies and race and ethnicity studies into conversation with one another.
• To highlight current research being undertaken by University of Oregon faculty and others—especially, but not exclusively, interdisciplinary research at the intersection of these two fields and others, including feminist scholarship and studies of class, disability, and other nonracial/ethnic minority identities.
• To foster a diverse intellectual climate at the University of Oregon, in part by contributing to the recruitment, retention, and ongoing success of faculty and graduate students working in the fields represented by the Center’s mission.

CRESS is unique not only in bringing together scholars in the fields of sexuality studies and race and ethnicity studies, but also because of its ties to the multi-institution research consortium, The Future of Minority Studies Project (FMS). While CRESS operates autonomously, it is the University of Oregon’s formal link to FMS, which is funded through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and generous contributions from Cornell University, Syracuse University, Stanford University, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. FMS includes over a hundred scholars from universities and colleges that include Emory University, Hamilton College, Spelman College, the University of Michigan-Dearborn, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and others.