W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies

W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies
Name	W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies
Established	1960s
Type	Academic department
Parent	University of Massachusetts Amherst
City	Amherst
State	Massachusetts
Country	United States

W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies

The W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies is an academic department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst devoted to the study of African-descended peoples, cultures, and histories. The department engages scholarship across history, literature, sociology, political thought, and cultural studies, while maintaining ties to regional and national organizations and initiatives in African American life.

History

The department traces its origins to student activism and curricular reform movements connected to the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power movement, and campus protests of the 1960s and 1970s that paralleled events at Howard University, Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and University of Michigan. Early influences included scholars and activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Marcus Garvey, Ella Baker, and Stokely Carmichael. Institutional milestones occurred alongside national developments like the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the rise of organizations such as the Black Panther Party and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The department’s curriculum expanded as comparative work with programs at Yale University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Cornell University, Duke University, Columbia University, and Brown University grew, and as partnerships developed with archives such as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and museums including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Academic Programs

The department offers undergraduate majors and minors and graduate training at the master’s and doctoral levels, connecting to interdisciplinary programs like the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and collaborative degrees with departments such as History, English, Sociology, Political Science, and Education. Courses address topics related to figures and movements including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Nina Simone, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Amiri Baraka. Program emphases include public history linked to institutions like the Library of Congress, comparative diasporic studies engaging areas such as Caribbean Studies, Afro-Latin American Studies, and connections to programs at University of the West Indies, University of Cape Town, University of Ghana, and University of Lagos.

Faculty and Research

Faculty research covers a wide range of topics from nineteenth-century abolitionism and Reconstruction studies to contemporary analyses of mass incarceration and cultural production. Scholars in the department reference and engage with work by historians and theorists such as Eric Foner, Ibram X. Kendi, Kelley, Robin D.G. (Robin D. G. Kelley), Saidiya Hartman, Michelle Alexander, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cornel West, Hannah Arendt, Frantz Fanon, and bell hooks. Research centers and projects often intersect with national foundations and agencies such as the MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, and institutes including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Historical Association. Faculty publish in venues and on topics that involve archives like the Schomburg Center, the National Archives and Records Administration, and collections tied to figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and Langston Hughes.

Student Life and Organizations

Student organizations associated with the department include campus chapters of national groups such as the Black Student Union, NAACP, and National Council for Black Studies, as well as cultural and service organizations inspired by figures and movements like Black Lives Matter, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Higher Education Research Institute. Student programming features speakers and visitors drawn from leaders and intellectuals including Angela Davis, Cornel West, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi, Michelle Alexander, Ava DuVernay, Kehinde Wiley, Spike Lee, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Alicia Keys, Oprah Winfrey, and Roxane Gay. Extracurricular activities include émigré and diasporic student groups connected to countries and regions such as Nigeria, Jamaica, Haiti, Ethiopia, Brazil, Cuba, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Community Engagement and Public Scholarship

The department maintains partnerships with local and regional organizations including the Museum of African American History (Boston), the Amherst Historical Society, and public schools, and collaborates on programming with national bodies such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center, African American Policy Forum, and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Public scholarship initiatives include oral history projects in collaboration with Smithsonian Folkways, community archives modeled on the Civil Rights Movement Archive, voter-education work linked to Brennan Center for Justice and civic engagement campaigns influenced by leaders like John Lewis, Stacey Abrams, and Bernice King. The department hosts symposia and lecture series featuring scholars and cultural producers such as Katherine McKittrick, Derrick Bell, Patricia Hill Collins, Gloria W. Johnson, Maya Angelou, and James Cone.

Facilities and Collections

Facilities supporting teaching and research include departmental seminar rooms, a lecture hall, and access to campus resources such as the W.E.B. Du Bois Library (University of Massachusetts Amherst), the Special Collections and University Archives, and regional repositories including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives. Collections emphasize printed and manuscript materials related to persons and movements like W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, and Frederick Douglass, as well as audio-visual holdings tied to artists such as Mahalia Jackson, Duke Ellington, and Nina Simone. The department also curates exhibits and digital projects collaborating with cultural institutions including the Smithsonian Institution, the New-York Historical Society, and the Museum of African American History (Boston).

Category:African-American studies departments Category:University of Massachusetts Amherst