Faculty Research Projects

African-American studies programs were born out of struggle, resistance, and demands for social justice.  Like much recent student activism, in the 1960s, students of color and their white allies confronted university administrators, occupied university buildings, and went on strike to demand recruitment of more minority students and faculty, curricular changes that would better reflect the diversity of the United States, and greater access to higher education for all.  In our research and professional activities, members of the African-American studies advisory board remain committed to furthering these core values of access, equity, and social justice.

In our teaching and research, we explore the historical, literary/artistic, and ideological contributions of marginalized groups in the United States while we interrogate the intersections among  multiple “minority” identities of gender, sex and sexuality, spirituality, class, and political and cultural ideologies that make up the “black experience.”