Africana Studies was launched in 2009 as a new interdisciplinary program merging the major in Black Studies and the concentration in African Studies.
Black Studies
"Established in the Fall of 1997 as an undergraduate, academic unit within Arts & Sciences, Black Studies, at William & Mary, provides an interdisciplinary framework for examining the experiences of people of African heritage. The curriculum engages students in the critical examination of black diasporic cultural traditions and race relations in Africa, the Caribbean Basin and especially North America; Black Studies regards black people and their cultures as essential, organic components of the societies in which they live. The major and minor in Black Studies draw on fields such as history, sociology, economics, anthropology, literature, music, drama, dance, film, and the visual arts."
The first program director of Black Studies according to William & Mary's 1997-1998 undergraduate catalog, was Jacquelyn Y. McLendon, a professor in the Department of English and Africana Studies.1
Africana Studies
"Africana Studies is an interdisciplinary major that explores the scholarship on the history and cultural traditions, and the political and economic circumstances which together define over 1.2 billion people of African descent. Students take a common set of core courses, and may select one of three tracks in which to concentrate:
- African Studies
- African-American Studies
- African-Diaspora Studies
"The central mission of the Program is to prepare students for lifelong learning, graduate study in various fields, and careers in private and public organizations worldwide. Africana Studies seeks to develop a habit of thinking that is inter-disciplinarily analytical and a habit of heart that is cross-culturally empathetic. Embracing more than the centrality of race, it is designed to apply a comparative lens to the study of imperial, national, ethnic, linguistic, and religious currents and intersections in Africa, and its far-flung Diaspora in North America, the Caribbean Basin, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, and Western Europe."2
Prof. Berhanu Abegaz was the first director of Africana Studies. Prior to that he was chair of the concentration in African Studies.
References
- Africana Studies Program website
- Black Studies Program, The College of William & Mary Undergraduate Catalog, 1997-1998, Special Collections Research Center, Earl Gregg Swem Library, William & Mary.
Material in the Special Collections Research Center
- Stony the Road We Trod Project: These oral history interviews by Jenay Jackson in 2005 documented information about the Black Studies Program and the experiences of African American Students at the College of William & Mary.
- The Flat Hat student newspaper; search the index available in the SCRC by person's name, student group name, event, or topical heading.
- Colonial Echo yearbook.
- William & Mary Catalogs & Handbooks.