Africana Studies provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the cultural, literary, political, social, and intellectual responses to slavery, colonialism, and racialization throughout Africa and its many diasporas. Our program in Africana Studies provides a cross-cultural, historically comparative framework to study the rich connections and exchanges among African people, their descendants, and the various “new worlds” in which they have made and are making their lives. A unique strength of Carleton’s Africana Studies program is the opportunity to explore these issues on the African continent and in numerous African diasporas: metaphorically through coursework on the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East and literally through Off-Campus Studies programs to Zanzibar, Tanzania, Senegal, and Ethiopia, among other locations.
How important is slavery and colonialism in understanding Black experiences? What is Blackness, and how it might change in relation to gender, sexuality, and/or class condition? What similarities, and differences, exist between African-diasporic communities across the globe? What are the Developing World, revolutionary origins of Black Studies as a discipline? Have these origins been abandoned in contemporary Africana scholarship? These questions are but a sample of what AFST students learn to answer. AFST critiques and corrects the distorting silences about Africans and their descendants in both academic and public knowledge.
Students can pursue their intellectual interests through coursework in Africana Studies, Cinema and Media Studies, Economics, Education Studies, English, History, Philosophy, Sociology/Anthropology, Religion, and Women’s & Gender Studies. Our multidisciplinary training develops one’s analytic, communicative, interpretive, and investigative skills. With recent hires, our offerings will expand starting with the 2023-24 academic year—just when you arrive on campus!