Afro-American Studies Doctoral Degree Requirements

Faculty | Master's | Doctoral | Courses

The core of the doctoral program is a sixteen-credit, two-semester seminar required for all first-year students, devoted to fifty major texts of Afro-American Studies. At the end of the first year, students choose one of the available specialty tracks in the program, and then take three semesters of courses and seminars in preparation for the Qualifying General Examinations. In the sixth semester, students prepare for that examination.

During the first five semesters, students are expected to take several courses and seminars in other cognate departments, both to broaden their perspective and to bring them into contact with at least some of the scholars across the campus also working in the subject area of Afro-American Studies.

The department has several archival collections available for research, including the W.E.B. Du Bois papers and the Horace Mann Bond Collection.

Students enrolled in the doctoral program will earn the degree of Master of Arts upon completion of the preliminary requirements for the doctorate.

Requirements

1. Grades of B or better in sixteen graduate courses and seminars for a total of 64 credits, no more than four of which shall be Afro-Am 699. Students will normally take Afro-Am 699 for eight credits in the sixth semester.

At the end of the first year, students elect to concentrate in either a History/Politics Track or a Literature/Culture Track. A Public Policy Track is being developed in collaboration with faculty of the University of Massachusetts Boston. Students electing the History/Politics Track will be expected to take three graduate-level courses or seminars offered by other departments or divisions of the University, as approved by the Graduate Program Director. Students electing the Literature/Culture Track will be expected to take four graduate-level courses or seminars offered by other departments or divisions of the University, as approved by the Graduate Program Director, including at least two graduate courses in literary theory offered by the English Department.

2. A two-semester double course, Afro-Am 701, 702, to count as four of the student's sixteen courses, required of all doctoral students in Afro-American Studies during their first year, and open only to first-year doctoral students.

3. Five courses selected from the subgroup of courses constituting either the Literature/Culture or the History/Politics track, to include appropriate courses from other departments.

4. Demonstration of reading proficiency in one language other than English directly related to the research interests and dissertation topic of the student, to be accomplished by the end of the sixth semester.

5. Satisfactory performance on a two-part written General Examination at the end of the sixth semester, the first part of which will test the student's general knowledge of the field of Afro-American Studies, and the second, the student's mastery of advanced materials in either the History/Politics or Literature/Culture track.

6. A total of ten Dissertation credits (Afro-Am 899).

7. A Doctoral Dissertation satisfactory in form and content.