Best Universities offering graduate programs in African Studies

The Department of African and African American Studies offers a graduate degree in African and African American Studies. The program offers rigorous interdisciplinary training in the humanities and the social sciences, with a focus in a disciplinary field, leading to the PhD.

A minimum of two years of full-time study (fourteen four-credit courses or equivalent) is required.

African Studies considers the arts, history, cultures, languages, literatures, politics, religions, and societies of Africa as well as issues concerning development, health, and the environment. Considerable flexibility and choice of areas of concentration are offered because students entering the program may have differing academic backgrounds and career plans. Enrollment in the M.A. program in African Studies provides students with the opportunity to register for the many African studies courses offered in the various departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the professional schools.

The Program in African Studies also offers two interdisciplinary seminars to create dialogue and to integrate approaches across disciplines. In addition to the M.A. degree program, the Council on African Studies offers students in the University’s doctoral and other professional degree programs the chance to obtain a Graduate Certificate of Concentration in African Studies by fulfilling a supplementary curriculum. Joint degrees are possible with the approval of the director of graduate studies (DGS) and the relevant officials in the schools of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Law, Management, and Public Health.

The University of Chicago has a long tradition of training scholars who study Africa. Many of those students earn their degrees from the Department of Anthropology, while others do so from the Departments of Comparative Human Development, History, and Political Science.

The university do not offer a stand-alone degree in African Studies. Instead, we offer students the opportunity to anchor their study of Africa from the strengths of their chosen discipline. At the same time, the African Studies Workshop, which is a centerpiece of graduate student training at the University of Chicago, fosters rigorous conversations that cut across disciplines. Those discussions expose students to various analytical paradigms and encourage students to develop facility with different sources and methods of scholarly inquiry.

The African Studies Workshop is organized on the principle that serious intellectual engagement is best achieved by reading and discussing papers, chapters, and articles that have not yet been published. Students who have completed their fieldwork and are writing up their research often present draft chapters of their dissertations. The workshop also gives graduate students in their first and second years an avenue to learn more about the practicalities of grantwriting and fieldwork as well as, most importantly, the larger intellectual questions that drive Africanist scholarship. This engaging and productive environment is unique among programs in African Studies, and the committment of faculty and students to the workshop distinguishes the University of Chicago’s Africanist community from most others.

The innovative Ph.D. program trains students in an interdisciplinary, three-fields approach to African, African American and African Diaspora Studies. Students critically examine the cultural, political, economic, and historical factors that have created and shaped the African, African American and African Diasporic experiences. The Program's in-depth training in the field of Africana Studies prepares students for the challenges of the globally interconnected world of the 21st century. The Program positions students for careers in the academy and professions, enabling them to make ground-breaking contributions to national and global discourse and problem solving.

The Africana Studies Ph.D. program is a small and high quality program designed to expand knowledge production about peoples of African descent and to train future generations of scholars who will deepen and refine the field.

An interdisciplinary field of study, Africana Studies embraces the study of people of African ancestry on the African continent and in the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and the broader diaspora. Toward that end, it is at the forefront of scholarship that both transcends disciplinary fields and brings more powerful explanatory value to issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. Accordingly, since its inception, Africana Studies has profoundly shaped research and discourse in the humanities and social sciences by altering traditional epistemologies and methodologies. Africana Studies has historically resisted the confines of national borders in its analyses.

Indeed, the diversity of the Cornell University's college system, its strengths in the traditional disciplines and its strong support and encouragement of interdisciplinary work provides students an ideal environment in which to pursue graduate training in this field. Moreover, Cornell now has a critical mass of scholars in the Humanities, Visual and Expressive Culture and Social Sciences whose work collectively sits on the cutting edge of Africana Studies.

The Department of Africana Studies at Brown University is the intellectual center for faculty and students interested in the critical study of the artistic, cultural, historical, literary and theoretical expressions of the peoples and cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora. The department has one of the leading faculties in the discipline.

The Ph.D. program in Africana Studies provides a firm base for graduate students to create new and innovative knowledge within the discipline as well as develop cutting-edge scholarship that contributes to the broader academy and public life. Graduate students in the program receive rigorous training in the discipline of Africana Studies and the theories and methods of interdisciplinary work, with an acute focus on race, class, gender, and sexuality, while being critically conversant with the methods and theories of other academic disciplines. The goal of the program is to prepare students to become skilled and informed scholars and educators poised to make significant contributions to academic and nonacademic communities and initiate cultural and social policies with humanitarian objectives informed by critical thinking and global perspectives on social and human development.

The African American Studies graduate program focuses on the life, culture, and social organization (broadly defined) of persons of African descent. The study of Africa, North America, and the Caribbean are central components of the program. Students are expected to apply a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the international and national divisions of race as they pertain to persons of African descent, wherever they may find themselves. Such an approach is to be employed for the study and understanding of development and underdevelopment, domination and power, self determination, mutual cooperation, and aesthetic and creative expression. Issues of identity construction, marginality, territoriality and the universal role of race in the organization of political economy and in class formation are critical to the program’s intellectual agenda.

A minimum of two years or four semesters of academic residence is required by the university for all Ph.D. programs. Academic residence is defined as enrollment in at least 12 units in the 200 series of courses. Thus, every graduate student must enroll in and complete a minimum of 12 units of graduate course work per required semester of academic residency. After successful completion of course work with a minimum GPA of 3.30, a pre qualifying examination based upon general knowledge in the field of African American Studies will be administered by the department.

Applicants must have completed an undergraduate degree and should demonstrate a general knowledge of African American history and an understanding of the disciplinary bases for the study of the African Diaspora. Demonstrated knowledge in the field should include understanding relations among social, economic, and political structures and culture in African American life. Applicant records must also demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language at the undergraduate level comparable to this university’s language requirement.

The School of Public Health and the African Studies Program have a concurrent degree program whereby students can pursue the MA degree in African Studies and the MPH with a specialization in Community Health Sciences at the same time. Applicants are required to satisfy the admission requirements of both programsm and students must meet the requirements in both programs to be awarded the degrees. Applicants interested in this concurrent program should contact the African Studies program, and the Student Affairs Office, the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

The Journalism and Africana Studies Joint M.A. at the Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS) is a 42 credit program (22 Journalism credits including a 1-credit internship and 1-credit directed reading for the Master’s project and 20 Africana Studies credits). Course requirements in Journalism are: Writing, Research and Reporting Workshop I, JOUR-GA 1021; Writing, Research and Reporting Workshop II, JOUR-GA 1022; three Journalism electives (at least two reporting-oriented); a 1-credit internship, JOUR-GA 1290; and a Master’s thesis completed while enrolled in Directed Reading, JOUR-GA 1299. Course requirements in Africana Studies are: Pro-Seminar I, AFRS-GA 2000 and four Africana Studies electives.

The mission of the Department of African Cultural Studies is to provide research and teaching in the languages and expressive cultures of Africa and Africans around the world. The department is the only one of its kind in the United States. It offers curricula leading to both the master of arts degree and the doctor of philosophy degree. Its students come from all over the world, including many African countries.