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
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies
Degrees Awarded: PhD
The W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies is one of the largest such departments in the country, offering an undergraduate major for all students who wish in-depth knowledge of the history and culture of Black people in Africa and the New World. The course of study is interdisciplinary with courses in African and Afro-American history, art, political science, and literature. Taught are such graphic arts as sculpting in clay, plaster, and metal and African textile design and fabric printing. Music offerings include music history and performance workshops. Students have the opportunity to participate in a variety of on- and off-campus learning situations. The training and experience of the faculty provides a perspective on the history, culture, and place in the world of Africans and Afro-Americans that differs markedly from that of the traditional disciplines. This approach to the study of human beings offers a better understanding of the totality of the individual or group experience.
Our doctoral program seeks to reproduce both the scholarship and the social commitment of Du Bois in a new generation of young scholar/actors who will carry into the Twenty-First Century the work that Du Bois accomplished in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Rigorously trained by us in the highest ideals and most advanced techniques of scholarship, our students are urged to carry that scholarship out of the academy and into the world, for the good of the community and the nation. Our dream, as we finally step down into retirement, is to see across this country dozens, if not hundreds, of well-trained scholars recreating our unique fusion of cross-disciplinary scholarship and social commitment in their own colleges and universities, and in the communities in which they live.
Afro-American Studies Faculty
ALLEN, Ernest, Jr., Professor
BOWMAN, Joye, Adjunct Professor
BRACEY, John H., Jr., Professor
CROSS, William E., Jr., Adjunct Professor
DuBOIS, David, Professor
HALL, Richard, Visiting Professor
HIGGINSON, John, Adjunct Professor
HILL, Dorrance, Assistant Professor
RICHARDS, J. V. O., Professor
SHEPP, Archie, Professor
SINHA, Manisha, Assistant Professor
SKERRETT, Joseph T., Jr., Adjunct Professor
STEVENS, Nelson, Associate Professor
STRICKLAND, William, Associate Professor
TERRY, Esther, M.A., Associate Professor
THELWELL, Michael, Professor
TRACY, Steven C., Associate Professor
WIDEMAN, John, Adjunct Professor
WOLFF, Robert Paul, Professor
Contact
W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies
325 New Africa House
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-6210 USA
Phone: 413.545.2751
Fax: 413.545.0628
E-mail:
www.umass.edu/afroam/
Chair/Director: Esther M.A. Terry
Associate Chair: Ernest Allen, Jr.
Graduate Director: Robert Paul Wolff
Admissions
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Graduate Admissions Office
530 Goodell Building
140 Hicks Way
Amherst, MA 01003-9333
Telephone: 413-545-0721
Fax: 413-577-0010
e-mail:
http://www.umass.edu/gradschool/applicants.html
Quick Links
American Quarterly [official journal site]
American Quarterly [editorial site]