Register
If you haven’t already, register to start contributing news and events, and to search the Member Directory. Registration is free, but only open to current members of the American Studies Association.
Publications: Directory of Graduate Programs
Harvard University
Department of Afro-American Studies
Degrees Awarded: PhD
Tuition: $26,400
Deadlines: Early January
Financial Aid: Stipend, fellowships, teaching
Enrollment: 6
PhD Program: The Department of Afro-American Studies offers a graduate program in the field of African American Studies. The aim of this program is to combine an interdisciplinary training in African American cultural and social studies with a focus in a major disciplinary field, leading to the PhD in African American Studies. The program admits four or five students a year into a five- to six-year program. While there are no specific prerequisites, typically students either have undergraduate majors in African American Studies, or have majors in fields such as anthropology, comparative literature, English, history, history of art, music, philosophy, sociology, and religious studies, and have done some undergraduate work in the field of African American studies. It is this interdisciplinary, comparative, cross-national approach to African American subjects in the Humanities and the Social Sciences that makes our PhD program unique. Students study these topics from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, participating in graduate seminars in anthropology, government, history, literature, and sociology, for example. Thus, they are able to ask and answer questions from a wider variety of perspectives than traditional disciplinary approaches allow. This interdisciplinary approach enables a student to produce richly contextualized analyses while retaining a principle focus within one discipline. The core seminar assures that students have familiarity with the essential social, political, economic and cultural background, and a body of established established questions central to the field.
Faculty in the Ph.D. Program
BLIER, Suzanne, Afro-American Studies, History of Art and Architecture; Director of Undergraduate Studies
BOBO, Lawrence, Afro-American Studies, Sociology; Director of Graduate Studies
DaCOSTA, Kimberly, Afro-American Studies, Social Studies
GATES, Henry Louis, Jr., Afro-American Studies, English, American Civilization
GLAESER, Edward, Economics
HIGGINBOTHAM. Evelyn Brooks, Afro-American Studies, History, American Civilization
MATORY, James Lorand, Afro-American Studies, Anthropology
O’DONOVAN, Susan, Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies and History
SHAW, Gwendolyn, Afro-American Studies, History of Art and Architecture
SHELBY, Tommie, Afro-American Studies, Social Studies
SHELEMAY, Kay Kaufman, Music
SOLLORS, Werner, Afro-American Studies, English, American Civilization
WEST, Cornel, (University Professor) Afro-American Studies, Divinity School
WILSON, William Julius, (University Professor) Afro-American Studies, Kennedy School
Contact
Department of Afro-American Studies
Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617/495-4113
Fax: 617/496-2871
Email:
Chair/Director: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Admissions
Harvard University
Graduate School of Arts & Science
8 Garden Street
Byerly Hall 2nd floor
Cambridge, MA 02138-3654
617-495-5315
http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/
Quick Links
American Quarterly [official journal site]
American Quarterly [editorial site]