The Department of African and African American Studies brings together scholars and scholarship from many disciplines to explore the histories, societies, and cultures of African and African-descended people. The field of African and African American studies is not only interdisciplinary but also comparative and cross-cultural. The department offers two distinct courses of study: the African track and the African American track.
The Department of African and African American Studies offers a doctoral degree in African and African American studies, which identifies synergies in theory, concept and method across the African Diaspora. Given shared concerns around race, racism, slavery, colonialism, post-colonialism, modernity and other conceptual apparatuses for understanding Africa and the Americas, students are encouraged to think robustly about the similarities, differences and linkages within the African Diaspora. The program affords rigorous interdisciplinary training in the humanities and the social sciences, with a focus in a disciplinary field, leading to the Ph.D.