Undergraduate Studies

The study of the African American experience has a long and distinguished history in the United States. The field has developed exciting insights as well as firm intellectual and empirical foundations for the systematic study of the African American experience and, through such study, for a greater understanding of the larger American experience. From its beginnings, the field has been strongly interdisciplinary, bringing the perspectives of different disciplines to bear on understanding black life. The Department of African American Studies exemplifies these traditions and strengths and, through its courses, provides opportunities to explore the richness and diversity of the African American experience in a meaningful and coherent way.

The department offers courses that focus on people of African descent in the United States and other regions of the Americas and the African diaspora - the communities created by the dispersion of peoples from the African continent. By comparing the black experience in various parts of the world, students learn to analyze identity, race, and racism as formations that change over time and space. This broad study of the African American experience is one of the key features of the department, distinguishing it from similar departments at other institutions. Major themes in the curriculum include the nature of colonization and its impact on the colonizer and the colonized; racism and its effects on society as well as on scholarship; the importance of oral language, history, and tradition in the African American experience; the roots and development of African American music, literature, and religious styles; analysis of key institutions such as the family; and the traffic of people, ideas, and artifacts throughout the African diaspora. African American studies provides good preparation for graduate work in the social sciences, the humanities, and the professions, as well as for jobs and careers in a variety of fields. Education, law, journalism, urban planning, health-care delivery and administration, business, social work, and politics are only a few of the fields for which African American studies provides an excellent background. In addition, since scholars and political leaders are paying increased attention to the Caribbean and Latin America as well as to blacks and other minorities in the United States, students of African American studies will enter a field that touches on issues of far-reaching national and international significance.