The African & Black Diaspora Studies Department
The goal of the African and Black Diaspora Studies Department is to provide its students with a systematic, interdisciplinary, and integrated course of study of Africa and the Black world. African and Black Diaspora Studies necessitate an intellectually rigorous, and socially conscious inquiry into the histories, cultures, and peoples of Africa and the Black diaspora.
ABD studies emphasizes the centrality of Black peoples to the modern world, while also examining the ways in which African and Black peoples have created unique and distinctive ways of being, thinking, and creating in response to larger and influential historical and social phenomena. These include (but are not limited to) slavery, colonialism, racism, and marginalization as well as broader and productive cross-cultural, transnational, and political collaborations. In the African and Black Diaspora Studies Department, we offer students a significant degree of flexibility to pursue their own interests and approaches to the study of Black and African peoples' histories and cultures.
African and Black Diaspora Studies graduates have gone on to pursue employment and graduate work (Masters and Doctoral) in a variety of areas including: Media and Cultural Analysis, African American and Africana Studies, International Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, Social Work, Higher Education administration, Law, Racial and Social Justice organizations, among other fields.