Graduate Program
Pending University approval, the Department of Africana Studies at Brown University will launch a MA/Ph.D. program in Africana Studies.
The graduate program will train students to become skilled and informed educators, scholars and intellectuals poised to make significant contributions to academic and nonacademic communities and initiate cultural, economic, political, and social policies with humanitarian objectives informed by critical thinking and national and global perspectives on social and human development.
The proposed program will feature three areas of emphasis:
- Studies in History, Politics, and Theory
- Studies in Literary, Expressive, and Performance Cultures
- Studies in Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality
Within these three areas Africana Studies graduate students at Brown will be able to explore the breadth and depth of the field while developing capacity and competence in distinct areas of scholarship. Graduate students in the program will receive rigorous training in the field of Africana Studies, the theories and methods of interdisciplinary work, with an acute focus on race, class, gender, sexuality, while being critically conversant with the methods and theories of other academic disciplines.
In addition, through the graduate program, the department will offer one semester or one year abroad for study and research at one of its trilateral research consortium partner institutions – the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town or the Centre for Caribbean Thought at the University of West Indies, Mona. These institutions offer extensive faculty expertise, course offerings, and research resources in the field of Africana Studies.
The goal of the graduate program in Africana Studies at Brown is to rigorously prepare students to develop new and innovative scholarship that explores and analyzes the distinct contributions of Africana cultural, intellectual, political, and artistic productions as well as critically investigate and develop new understandings, methods, and theories of critical interdisciplinary knowledge production.
Studies in History, Politics, and Theory
Studies in History, Politics, and Theory focuses on the institutional, theoretical and material expressions of Africana culture, experience, and thought. Graduate students with research interests in this area will draw on theories, methods, and approaches from Africana philosophy, critical theory, feminist theory, political theory, history, religious studies, and sociology in developing innovative research projects that engage past and present social and political formations, the production and reproduction of critical knowledges, and the representation of historical and political ideas and formations.
Studies in Literary, Expressive, and Performance Cultures
Studies in Literary, Expressive and Performance Cultures focuses on the critical study of visual culture, performance, and the literary arts that critique the contributions and (self) representations of people of African descent in global and contested societies. Graduate students with research interests in this area will draw on the methods and theories in Africana Studies as well as engage scholarship in aesthetic theory, cultural studies, literary theory and criticism, media studies, and performance studies.
Studies in Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality
Studies in Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality focuses on the cultural, ideological, political, and theoretical implications of feminist consciousness, practices, and theories, constructions of gender as well as critical understandings and analyses of sexuality throughout the Africana world. This area of emphasis also stresses the critical examination of the complex interrelationships between feminist theory, constructions of gender and sexuality, and the constructions and operations of legal systems and public policy. Graduate studies with research interests in this area will critically engage concepts, methods, and theories developed in critical theories of race, diaspora studies, feminist studies, masculinity studies, queer theory, and womanist theory to examine historical and contemporary forms and formulations of feminism, gender, and sexuality across various Africana social, cultural, economic, political, and theoretical formations.