African American Studies is an interdisciplinary major that examines questions of race, culture, and struggles for equality as they are rooted in the experiences of people of African descent in Black Atlantic societies, including the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The program offers the opportunity to study the arts, literature, and history as well as economic, political, and social institutions.
Course topics include African American history; modern and contemporary African American literature; historical and contemporary political activity of African Americans; and questions of race, nation, and ethnicity.
Majors have considerable freedom in their course choices. Students are required to pursue an interdisciplinary education, taking courses across the humanities and social sciences. An area of concentration, selected by the student, may be rooted in a single discipline such as American studies, anthropology, English, history, political science, or sociology, or may encompass broader theoretical frameworks such as race and ethnicity, cultural studies, feminism, or gender.
