Loading...

About the Program

 

The Department of African American Studies is an intellectual community committed to producing, refining and advancing knowledge of Black people in the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe and Africa. A key component of our mission is to interrogate the meanings and dimensions of slavery and colonialism, and their continuing political, social and cultural implications.

Our faculty is drawn from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, cultural studies, linguistics, literature, history, sociology, performance, and creative writing. We are united by a relentless commitment to pushing the boundaries of knowledge through excellence in scholarship and pedagogy that are at once interdisciplinary and innovative.

Call for Applicants: Assistant Professor of Caribbean Studies

The Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley seeks a tenure-track Assistant Professor whose work demonstrates contributions to Caribbean Studies. Applications are due Monday, September 2, 2024 at 11:59 pm P.T.

The Department of African American Studies is an intellectual community committed to producing, refining and advancing knowledge of Black people in the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe and Africa. A key component of our mission is to interrogate the meanings and dimensions of slavery and colonialism, and their continuing political, social and cultural implications.

The Caribbean has been central to the founding of our department and doctoral program and to our understanding of the field of African Diaspora Studies. In recent years, we have witnessed a resurgence of the Caribbean both as a key site in the field and as a place from which so much of our theorizing about blackness, colonialism, fugitivity and necropolitics derives. Applicants’ research and teaching should therefore investigate and produce knowledge centered on the Caribbean both geographically and analytically. This may include work on cultural representation and practices, epistemologies structuring the knowledge of philosophies, social-cultural formations, politics and political-economic processes, among other substantive areas. We adopt an expansive approach to the Caribbean that understands it as a geographic, socio-cultural and economic formation that is not static over time. As such, we invite scholars working on the broader circum-Caribbean, including work across different colonial and anticolonial formations, as well as work on the Caribbean diaspora and on the Caribbean coasts of Central and South America.

We are interested in applicants whose research and teaching articulate a clear methodological approach, whether grounded in a distinct discipline or in interdisciplinary practice. Successful candidates for academic positions in the African American Studies Department and Social Sciences Division of Letters and Science will demonstrate evidence of a commitment to advancing equity, inclusion, and belonging in the realms of research, teaching and service. We seek applicants working in and across fields and disciplines including but not limited to: history, literary studies, anthropology, sociology, geography, performance studies, visual culture studies, black feminist theory, queer cultural studies, and critical media studies.

Review the Application Requirements & Apply

 

 


 
 

400 Years of African American History Symposium

This day-long symposium will kick off a year of events at UC Berkeley to mark the 400 year anniversary of the beginning of slavery in North America. The events are being co-organized by the Haas Institute, the African American studies and history departments, the African American Student Development Center, and the Black Staff & Faculty Organization.

Read Full Story

Race and the Law minor

Departments of African American Studies and Ethnic Studies

Race and the Law Summer Minor

The summer minor in Race and the Law is created to develop students’ understanding of the fundamental interconnections between race and the law within and beyond the U.S.  Historically, law has been instrumental in codifying racial difference and establishing racial hierarchies. Contemporary conflicts over migration, citizenship, indigenous claims to land, and environmental justice are part of a broader history that demands attention to the role of the law in creating and contesting social power.  Course offerings will address these issues to demonstrate why law is an essential component of racialization, and conversely, why it is impossible to understand U.S. legal history without addressing race.

Learn more about the program