About Us
Philosophy and Mission
The Africana Studies Department and the Rites and Reason Theatre at Brown University are dedicated to the critical examination of the theoretical, historical, literary, and artistic developments of the various cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora. Our commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship as well as student and community programming emphasize the global reach and implications of the Africana World without losing sight of the specific concerns of African American experiences.
A Meeting Place of Ideas
The Department is a meeting place for professors and students from across Brown University with numerous disciplinary and interdisciplinary interests. Our faculty research and teaching are concerned, in the broadest sense, with Africana experiences in all their complexity. All faculty members have research and teaching specialties related to the impact of slavery, colonialism, and racialism on the modern world. Africana Studies at Brown is distinguished in its focus on the ways of thinking and the various knowledges produced by Africana thought, practice and experience.
Creative Intersections
Central to the work of the department is the role of the Rites and Reason Theatre, the research and performing arts component of the Africana Studies Department at Brown. Artists collaborate closely with scholars in various disciplines to discover the underlying harmonies between academic and artistic perceptions of the world. Rites and Reason provides the Department with important means of interaction with the various academic and non-academic communities.
The Department also has special strengths in the literary arts. Several highly distinguished writers from the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean are members of the Africana faculty in addition to a number of noted scholars of Africana literature and literary criticism. The Department also has strengths in "Native American/Afro-American Relations in the Americas" and "Race, Race formation, and Race Relations in the Americas before 1800."
Global Dialogues
The Africana Studies Department is also involved in international collaborative research projects on the African Diaspora. For example, the Department has joint projects with the Centre for Caribbean Thought at the University of the West Indies, Mona and a joint graduate exchange program with the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. These collaborative research and teaching projects reflect the department’s interest in the global examination of Africa and the African Diaspora.
Local Roots
The Department has a history of commitment to participation in the life of the various cultures of Greater Providence and provides opportunities for students to become involved in the activities of the respective communities of Providence.
Original Research Opportunities
The Brown University libraries provide numerous opportunities for original research in the subjects for which the Department provides training. The John Hay Library has the Harris Collection on American Poetry, Popular Entertainment and Plays; the McClellan Lincoln Collection; and the Metcalf Collection of Pamphlets. The John Carter Brown Library has one of the best collections in this hemisphere of works published in and about the New World before the nineteenth century. The libraries are particularly outstanding for their extensive holdings in the areas of slavery, colonialism, and race relations. Microfilm collections include the FBI files on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, as well as the papers of W. E. B. Du Bois, Alexander Crummell, and Carter G. Woodson.