Welcome to African American Studies

About the Program

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Student Blackout
Bil Banks and James Baldwin
Christian
African American Studies & African Diaspora Studies

Upcoming Events

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.

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News

November 12, 2024

Punctum Books
Darieck Scott's "The Dream Slaves" Published with Punctum Books

From Punctum Books

October 15, 2024

Professor Stephen Small to Retire December 2024

Stephen Small, Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies (AAS) and Director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI), is retiring in December 2024 after 30 years as a faculty member at UC Berkeley. Born and raised in Liverpool, England, Professor Small came to Berkeley in 1984 as a graduate student in Sociology, where he became a graduate student trainee at the Institute for the Study of Social Change, now ISSI.

October 2, 2024

Robert Allen and The Black Scholar: A Tribute

Robert Allen’s life with The Black Scholar began in February, 1972, when his first article for the journal came into print. He was 29 years old. By September of that year, he had not only become Associate Editor of the journal, but had also been elected Vice-President of the Black World Foundation,--the non-profit that published and governed the journal.