Mission Statement
The objective of the Doctoral Program in Afro-American Studies is to produce scholars and teachers in the tradition of the Department's namesake, W. E. B. Du Bois, a native son of Massachusetts who throughout his long life insisted that a commitment to social justice must be rooted in scholarship of the highest order. The central conceptual theme of the Du Boisian tradition is eloquently captured by his most widely-quoted pronouncement: "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." In our view, it would be equally true to say that the problem of the entire sweep of American history and society is the problem of the color line, for from the earliest Colonial days to the present, the role, status, and treatment of the African slaves and their descendants have been at the heart of the American story.
Materially, it was the forced labor of the slaves that built the great wealth of the American South, and fueled the economic expansion that created the modern American nation. Militarily, it was the struggle to end slavery that precipitated the convulsive conflict of the Civil War, universally recognized as the defining event of American history. Politically, it has been the necessity of accommodating the existence of the institution of slavery and its successor practices that has driven both the formation of the United States and its subsequent politics, all the way to presidential contests being fought out in a given year. Legally, it is the anomaly of slavery that has distorted and contorted the American judicial system for three centuries. And spiritually, it is slavery, and the racism attendant upon it and upon its aftermath, that has fatally corrupted America's claim to be a City shining upon a Hill, acting as a moral beacon to humankind.Indeed, we can ill afford to ignore the role of people of African descent in the making of the American nation. Through their rich cultural heritage and long, historical struggles against various forms of racial oppression, African Americans have not merely contributed to, but have redefined and remade the American experience. In the end, the nation was led to rely on the efforts of its disfranchised to redeem its notions of citizenship and democracy. Similarly, the nation's distinctive tradition in music, dance, art, folklore, literature, language, and humor was dependent on the cultural gifts bequeathed to it by the oppressed within its borders. In many ways this dependency continues today. To recapture all the dimensions of the African American past is to emerge with a new understanding of American society as a whole.
Because of the centrality of the role of African Americans, we are persuaded that a consideration of the Afro-American experience is nothing less than a reconsideration of America. Through the prism of Afro-American Studies, the light shining from the City upon a Hill is fractured into the rainbow of the composite American experience. When that light is resynthesized, we are presented with a new image of America, an image critical as well as celebratory. Afro-American Studies is not, in our conception of it, the Negro Quarter in the ghetto of Multiculturalism--a vibrant place of strange sounds and smells that the uptown folks can visit on a night out. Afro-American Studies is the necessary corrective to a three-centuries-long misappropriation of the American experience by the Humanities.
Because the Afro-American experience is as multi-dimensional as life itself, the study of that experience must range over many disciplines. Once again, Du Bois serves as our guide, for in the vast corpus of his writings, spanning as they do nearly a century, we find history, philosophy, politics, sociology, religion, music, poetry, fiction, the visual and plastic arts, and law. Although none of us can lay claim to the entire legacy of this protean man, we aspire, as a department, to achieve some measure of the universality that was his crowning achievement. To paraphrase an epigram fashioned with Thomas Jefferson in mind, the scholarly world has rarely seen so impressive a collection of intellectual achievements as when Du Bois sat down to dine alone.
A legacy of this magnitude would be inspiration enough, one might think, but it is in fact only part of the task Du Bois sets us by his example, for throughout his life, he was a thoroughly engaged and committed activist, working for the advancement of the African American people and thereby for the liberation of America itself. At every stage in his career, he combined rigorous scholarship with social and political action, never content to allow his books and articles to speak for him. This same fusion of scholarship and action is the distinctive hallmark of our department, for virtually all of our members have, in their own lives, exhibited the same inseparability of theoria and praxis.
Our doctoral program seeks to reproduce both the scholarship and the social commitment of Du Bois in a new generation of scholar/actors who will carry into the twenty-first century the work that Du Bois accomplished in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rigorously trained in the highest ideals and most advanced techniques of scholarship, our students also learn from us the responsibility to carry that scholarship out of the academy and into the world, for the good of the community and the nation.
Requirements for the Ph.D. in Afro-American Studies
Preliminary Requirements
- (The slight variation between the two tracks in the course requirements
reflects the Department's response to comments by English Departments whose
opinions were solicited as part of our review of employment opportunities.
A number of respondents stated that they looked for evidence of formal
training in literary theory in applicants for entry level tenure track
Assistant Professorships. To meet their needs, we have added such a requirement
in the Literature/Culture track.)
Satisfaction of the above requirements shall constitute completion of the Preliminary Requirements for the Ph.D.
Additional Requirements
To obtain an application form for our Ph.D. program, direct your inquiry to the Office of the Graduate School at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. Using the web, you may apply on-line or download a copy of the application form via the following address:
http://www.umass.edu/gradschool/applicants.html
E-mail inquiries may be directed to gradadm@resgs.umass.edu
Or, using more traditional methods, you may contact the
Graduate Admissions Office
530 Goodell Building
Box 33291
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-3291Phone: (413) 545-0721 (24 hours)
Phone: (413) 545-0722 (8:30 am - 5:00 pm, M-F)
Fax: (413) 577-0010
