American studies. Even more recently, ethnic studies has grown philosophically and politically closer to LGBTQ studies. "Ethnic Studies" is often housed within departments or units with many different names. Teaching units often have a range of different names—Critical Ethnic Studies, Comparative American Cultures, Ethnic Studies, or American Studies and Ethnicity—for curricula and faculty who are gathered together under the same set of academic interests. A wide variety of curricula are employed in the service of each of these rubrics. Occasionally, the gap between American Studies and Ethnic Studies can be productively bridged, especially in departments where the bulk of faculty focus on race and ethnicity, difference and power. But that bridgework can be troublesome, obscuring one foci and sharpening the emphasis on another. As a consequence of this great variation, though, ethnic studies needs to be understood within its specific institutional context. And, despite considerable financial (and often political) pressure to consolidate or eliminate ethnic studies within American Studies—or to house Native American studies, Latino studies, and Asian American studies within either ethnic studies or American Studies—the relationships between these fields should be considered within each institution's governing eco-system. Professional associations Association for Ethnic Studies The Association for Ethnic Studies (AES) was founded in 1972 by several scholars who wanted to study race through an interdisciplinary approach. It was previously known as the National Association for Ethnic Studies (NAES), and was initially named the National Association of Interdisciplinary Studies for Native-American, Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Asian Americans. The organization was officially renamed as NAES in 1985, and then to its current name in 2018. It is the oldest ethnic studies association in the United States. From its founding, the organization has strived to promote scholarship, research, and curriculum design for its members. The organization hosts an annual conference. AES also publishes the Ethnic Studies Review, a peer-reviewed journal for scholarship in ethnic studies, published by the University of California Press. Critical Ethnic Studies Association (CESA) The Critical Ethnic Studies Association began with its first conference in March 2011 at the University of California Riverside, Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide: Settler colonialism/Heteropatriarchy/White Supremacy. This prompted the people who had organized and partaken in the conference to form the association. The second conference then took place in September 2013 at the University of Illinois Chicago and it was themed, Decolonizing Future Intellectual Legacies and Activist Practices. The third