We are an intellectual community committed to producing, refining and advancing knowledge of Black people in the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe and Africa. A key component of our mission is to interrogate the meanings and dimensions of slavery and colonialism, and their continuing political, social and cultural implications.
We teach undergraduates at Berkeley about the social, political, and cultural history of African-descended people in the modern world. While its primary focus is on the United States, the program’s conceptual framework places African Americans within a broader global, diasporic dialogue about the evolving function of race in history as well as in the contemporary moment. With this background, our students are equipped with these tools as they pursue a variety of professional paths, making them better teachers, public officials, policy-makers, journalists, lawyers, doctors, and business professionals.
Our Ph.D. program in African Diaspora Studies is the first such program of its kind, training students to theorize the African Diaspora and racialized blackness across history, social institutions, culture and geographical location. We recruit the most promising and disciplinary-diverse young scholars and specifically educate them to direct the future research trajectory of African Diaspora Studies as a field. Our graduates hold postdoctoral and tenure-track positions at both large research universities and small liberal arts colleges in the US and abroad, building a society that is better educated and equipped to grapple with racial complexity and address long-standing inequities.
| Rank | State | Gifts |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | CA | 3 |
| 2 | PA | 1 |
| 3 | AA | 0 |
