African American Studies

Overview

The field has developed exciting insights as well as firm intellectual and empirical foundations for the systematic study of the experience of communities of African descent in the United States and elsewhere and, through such study, for a greater understanding of local, national, transnational, diasporic, and global dynamics, their histories and intersections. From its beginnings, the field has been strongly interdisciplinary, bringing the perspectives of different disciplines to bear on understanding black life especially in the United States. The Department of African American Studies exemplifies these traditions and strengths and, through its courses, provides opportunities to explore the richness and diversity of the black experience in a meaningful and coherent way.

The African American Studies Department at Northwestern University offers courses comparing the black experience in various parts of the world, allowing students to learn to analyze identity, race, and racism as formations that change over time and space. This broad study of the black experience is one of the key features of the Department, distinguishing it from similar departments at other institutions.

Major themes in the curriculum include:

• the nature of colonization and its impact on the colonizer and the colonized
• the advent, implications, and legacies of trans-Atlantic slavery
• racism and its effects on society as well as on scholarship
• the makings and conceptualizations of the black diaspora
• the importance of oral language, history, and tradition in the black experience
• the roots and development of black music, literature, and religious styles
• black politics and social movements, and black radicalism
• the analysis of key institutions and topics such as the family, gender and class relations, and sexuality.