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

October 2, 2024

Robert Lee Allen was lovely to me. He was certainly the calmest revolutionary I ever met. My first association with The Black Scholar was publishing in it, an experience wholly started by Dr. Allen. After a traumatic, but ultimately successful QE experience, it was Robert that helped me find my confidence again. JFinley and I were his GSIs for 5B, and he asked us each to do a guest lecture based on our own work. Then he asked me to review one of his articles.

August 29, 2024

African American Studies is excited to welcome our newest addition to the faculty, Assistant Professor Henry Washington Jr.! Professor Washington was previously an Assistant Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University. We recently sat down with him to learn more about his work and ideas for his new role: 

July 25, 2024

“A North Star for how I make my way through the world” – Former student and Co-founder of Art Aids Art, Dorothy Yumi Garcia (Mills College, 1979).