Welcome to African American Studies

About the Program

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.

News

February 3, 2021

January 19, 2021

January 13, 2021

The Department of African American Studies at Berkeley is proud to be one of 16 college and university recipients of the Andrew A. Mellon Foundation’s new Just Futures grant, which will support our multidisciplinary, humanities-led teams working to address racial inequality. Learn more [press release below]

UC Berkeley’s Department of African American Studies Awarded $2.8 Million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation