The Multiculturalist Movement: Challenging the Mainstream Historical Discourse in the United States

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies programs were created in several American universities following student activism. These programs provided women, racial and ethnic minorities with an institutional structure to develop knowledge about their history and experience. In the 1980s, with the emergence of the multiculturalist movement, new demands were made by students who called into question the invisibility or marginalization of the history of women and minorities within the mainstream curriculum. This article will look at the genealogy of Ethnic and Women’s Studies programs and the role that the theoretical framework they elaborated played in uncovering racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities’ contribution to American history in particular, so as to analyze the way they deconstructed the mainstream historical discourse to make these minorities visible and foster the adoption of a multicultural historical discourse to try to transform the American identity into a multicultural one.