Africana Studies

Hampshire College's concentration in Africana Studies (also known as Black Studies) takes a global approach to the study of African and African descendant life, experience, and culture.

Our Africana Studies courses often incorporate history, politics and the arts as critical arenas for research, writing, and creative expression.

Emerging from a tradition of scholar-activism, this area of study will deepen students' knowledge of Africa and the African Diaspora, prepare students for advanced study, and nurture academic pursuits toward social justice and responsibility to community.

The approaches and frameworks of study currently taught include the Black Radical Tradition, Black Atlantic history and literature, black queer studies, black feminism, state-society relations in Africa, African diasporic biography and memoir, cultural studies, social movements, the carceral state, and prison literature.
The legacy of Black Studies at Hampshire began in the early 1970s with the teaching, scholarship, art, and activism of Gloria I. Joseph, Robert Marquez, Eugene Terry, and Lloyd Hogan and later continued with James Baldwin, Ray Copeland, Vishnu Wood, Yusef Lateef, Roland Wiggins, E. Frances White, Jill Lewis, Andrew Salkey, Frank Holmquist, and Mike Ford.
An interdisciplinary field of study founded at colleges and universities across the U.S. over 40 years ago, at Hampshire it includes: history, literature, sociology, education, arts and aesthetics, archaeology, music, dance and performance, gender and sexuality, economics, politics, film and media, and philosophy.

• What is Africa to Me
• 20th Century Dance History: American Protest Traditions
• African American Women in Defense of Themselves: Organizing Against Sexual Violence in African American History
• Antebellum Social Movements
• Art/Artifact: African Art and Material Culture
• Controversies in U.S. Economic and Social History
• Dancing Motown
• Interpreting the Movement: Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of Twentieth Century
• Jazz Modernism
• Life and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois
• McKay, Robeson, and Assata: Radical Ruptures
• 'People Without History: Historical Archaeologies of Atlantic Africa and the African Disapora
• Organizing in the Whirlwind: African American Social Movements in the Twentieth Century
• Reading, Writing, and Citizenship: African American Educational Campaigns
• The Great Depression and the Great Recession: The History of Working Class Struggle in America
• Warfare in the American Homeland
• Writing the Civil War
• Black Feminism: Theory/Praxis (MHC)
• Intro to African-American Studies (MHC)
• African Diaspora Arts (UMass)
• History of Black Women in America (SC)
• Intro to African-American Music (SC)
• Intro to Black Culture (SC)
• Race and Radicalism (AC)
• Studies in African-American Literature (AC) 

Requirements

• Common Application
• An academic paper in English
• Supplemental essay responses
• Current transcripts
• School report, including guidance counselor recommendation
• At least one letter of recommendation from a teacher
• Certification of Finances form
• TOEFL or IELTS score (Minimum TOEFL score of 91 or a minimum IELTS score of 6.5. Predicted grades for IB English A1 or A2, or for A-level English, will also be considered.
• Additional letters of recommendation, up to three

Scholarships

• MacArthur Foundation Grant Making Programs
• American Association of University Women
• Fulbright International Scholarship Program for non-US students