African American Studies

The African American Studies program prepares students with the comprehensive knowledge base, critical skills and social consciousness necessary to function as effective leaders in an increasingly globalized and diverse society. Our program is grounded in the decolonization and liberation projects of African Americans and their allies in the civil rights, gender, and sexual liberation movements of the 1960s that continue through the present in new forms that address new conditions. The aim of African American Studies is to support students in developing a critical consciousness and an understanding of social, political, cultural, and economic forces that have shaped the histories and current day realities of African Americans. Our studies are centered in the principles of social justice and self-determination of oppressed communities. This program utilizes the knowledges, epistemologies, and critical thinking produced by racially and sexually oppressed subjects, and we endeavor to examine the entangled intersectionality of racialized sexuality, gender, and class in complex socio-historical processes.

Career Opportunities

Health care, social work, mental health, law, historical societies, education, non-profit organizations, community organizing.

Program Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this program a student will be able to:

1. Research: Evaluate the development of the field of African American Studies, and utilize research methodologies and scholarship within the field to produce research papers.
2. Analysis: Effectively employ social science methodologies in the analysis of issues related to African American Studies.
3. Identify and describe the general history of African American people in the U.S. and the Diaspora (i.e., West Africa, Middle passage, North American slavery, Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow Era, and Civil Rights Movement).