Graduate Program Purpose and Goals
The objective of the
graduate 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.Our graduate students receive a thorough grounding in the historical
and cultural realities of the African American experience and are assisted
in developing the intellectual and scholarly capacity to undertake an
Afro-American critique of American life, history, and society, as well
as to make on-going contributions to the scholarship on the questions
of race and race relations.Our graduate program encourages our students
to adopt a critical perspective requiring an integrative approach to
the study of history, politics, economics, and culture that does not
abstract them from their political and social contexts, but rather relocates
them within the social and political contexts out of which they have
developed. Students are required to focus not only on the experiences
of African Americans, but also on the linkages of those experiences to
the cultural, political, and economic forces of the larger society to
which Black people have been, and are, inextricably linked.There
is a growing demand for scholars and teachers who are professionally
trained in African American Studies and who are able to teach the subject
at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It is our aim to produce a
steady stream of superbly trained scholar-teachers who will help to staff
the undergraduate and graduate departments and programs in Afro-American
Studies throughout the country as well as the numerous public and private
schools which have expanded their curricula to include the sutdy of Black
people in the United States.In addition to African American
Studies departments and programs which will provide a natural source
of teaching positions for our graduates, there are hundreds of history
departments and literature departments seeking scholars and teachers
to staff courses in Afro-American history or literature. As a consequence,
our graduates will be able to obtain teaching positions in four year
colleges and in universities.Graduates of the Du Bois Department also
are prepared to meet the growing demand for men and women possessing
a scholarly understanding of Afro-American Studies, a demand expressed
by federal, state, and local government, by charitable organizations,
and by other organizations of public trust and responsibility.
