African American Studies: Home

"African American studies are academic units that focus on the systematic investigation of people of African descent in their contacts with Europeans, their dispersal throughout the diaspora, and the subsequent institutionalization of racism and oppression as means of economic, political, and social subordination. From the outset, these studies had both an academic and a social mission."

Aldridge, Delores. "African American Studies." In K. Lomotey (Ed.) Encyclopedia of African American Education (2010). 

• The Genesis of Dr. Carter Woodson's Negro History Week - Smithsonian Museum
• King Philosophy - The King Center
• MLK and the Chicago Movement - WTTW, Chicago PBS
• Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. "Racial formations." Race, class, and gender in the United States 6 (2004)
• Anthony Borgues: What are the legacies of racial slavery? 
• Ibram Rogers, The Black Campus Movement and the Institutionalization of Black Studies, 1965-1970, Journal of African American Studies, March 2012, Vol. 16, No. 1, (March 2012), pp. 21-40.
• Carter G. Woodson's The Miseducation of the Negro
• Author Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses the revision of the AP African American Studies course - CBS News
• Greg Carr, What Black Studies is Not: Moving from Crisis to Liberation in Africana Intellectual Work, Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 23, No. 1, March 2011
• Darlene Clark Hine, "A Black Studies Manifesto: Characteristics of a Black Studies Mind," The Black Scholar 44, no. 2 (2014). 
• Abdul Alkalimat's The History of Black Studies. London: Pluto Press, 2021. 
• M. Keith Claybrook Jr. "Why Black Studies?" Black Perspectives. 

Citation Justice is the idea of using citation to emphasize the voices of others. Researching is not a neutral act. We make conscious decisions on whose voices to include in our research and how we interact with the world around us affects how we research. As such, it is important to cite diverse voices in our bibliographies. Think about the following questions:

• Who gets to create research?
• Who gets to be written about?
• How does who is telling our stories change our worldview?
• What is the hidden cost of research?

To learn more, check out Cite Black Women, a movement that engages with social media "in order to push people to critically rethink the politics of knowledge productive by engaging in a radical praxis of citation that acknowledges and honors Black women's transnational intellectual production."

Brittney Yancy

Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies Program Coordinator

brittney.yancy@ic.edu