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Main Image for Africana Studies

Africana Studies

Donna Ford Grover,  visiting associate professor of literature and American studies. Photo by Chris Kayden
Africana Studies Menu
Apply Now!
The Africana Studies Concentration
is an interdisciplinary concentration that examines the cultures, histories, and politics of African peoples on the African continent and throughout the African diaspora. The Africana Studies concentration teaches students to use diverse historical, political, ethnographic, artistic, and literary forms of analysis. Through these interdisciplinary studies, students trace the historical and cultural connections between Africa and the rest of the world, and explore their importance for African peoples and the nature of modern global society.

About the Program

  • Requirements
    Concentration in Africana Studies must be combined with a major in a traditional disciplinary program. Ideally, a student moderates simultaneously in Africana Studies and the disciplinary program. Before Moderation, a student is expected to take at least three Africana Studies courses or Africana Studies cross-listed courses, including the core course, Africana Studies 101, Introduction to Africana Studies, or the equivalent. To graduate, the student must take two additional Africana Studies or cross-listed courses, including one 300-level seminar. The Moderation and Senior Project boards should each include one Africana Studies core faculty member.

Faculty Members and Associates

Director:
Helen Epstein

Daniel Williams
Yuka Suzuki
Wendy Urban-Mead
Tabetha Ewing
Sayeeda Moreno
Susan Aberth
Souleymane Badolo
Peter Rosenblum
Peter L'Official
Nuruddin Farah
Lloyd Hazvineyi
Kwame Holmes
Jomaira Salas Pujols
John Ryle
Helen Epstein
Donna Grover
Dinaw Mengestu
Dina Ramadan
Christian Crouch

Ziad Dallal
Youssef Ait Benasser
Yarran Hominh
Victor Apryshchenko
Thomas Chatterton Williams
Sarah Dunphy-Lelii
Sanjay De Silva
Robert Tynes
Robert Cioffi
Kobena Mercer
John Esposito
Jennifer Phillips
Luis Chavez
Ibrahim Elhoudaiby
Felicia Keesing
Erin Atwell
Ephraim Asili
Drew Thompson
Dawn Lundy Martin

Courses

Each semester Bard offers a selection of Africana Studies courses and a series of courses cross-listed from related programs. Follow the link below to view the courses being offered this semester.

View the Current Courses

Senior Projects

Complete versions of Africana Studies Senior Projects available at the library’s Digital Commons linked below.

Go to Digital Commons

Reflecting on the Moment

Conversations on Racial Equity and Justice

Drew Thompson, Assistant Professor of Africana and Historical Studies and Director of Africana Studies, and Dariel Vasquez ’17, cofounder and codirector of Brothers@Bard and Brothers@, speak about the role of mentorship and the university in the wake of the global pandemic and police brutality.

Events Archive

2025
  
2023
  
2022
  
2021
  
View Full Archive


2022 Past Events

  • Monday, November 14, 2022 
    Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and Carcerality
    Olin Humanities, Room 102  5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
    Bard’s new Carceral Studies speaker series launches with a visit from the NYU Prison Education Project. Their recently published book Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and Carcerality explores how the car, despite its association with American freedom and mobility, functions at the crossroads of two great systems of entrapment and immobility– the American debt economy and the carceral state. We will be joined by four of the Lab members, a group representing formerly incarcerated scholars and non-formerly incarcerated NYU faculty. 

  • Friday, October 21, 2022 
    An evening of tango, music, and laughter.
    Campus Center, Multipurpose Room  6:00 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
    Free for Bard students!

    Did you come to La Voz Harvest Moon and had a great time? Did you miss it?

    Don't miss this last opportunity to celebrate the 18th anniversary of La Voz. Enjoy Argentine tango and folklore with Eduardo Parra, who will give a concert and will also teach us how to dance tango. We will also have the traditional Veracruz music Son Jarocho in the hands of the group Ameyal with Maria and Mateo. Of course, there will be food, and karaoke! Participate if you dare.

    And most importantly, we will publicly recognize several members of the community who have been nominated by their peers for their dedicated service to the Hispanic immigrant communityof the Hudson Valley: Claudette Aldebot, Maria Cabrera, Víctor Cueva, Adelio Ramírez, Felipe Santos, and Joan Ruiz Werkema. It will be an unforgettable night.

    Thank you to the sponsors of our anniversary celebrations.

    Major sponsors: Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union, Radio Kingston, Ulster Savings Bank, St. Catherine Center for Children

    Patron sponsors: M&T Bank, Nuvance, Sun River, SUNY Ulster

    Community-level sponsors: Hudson Valley Hospice, RUPCO

    ***
    ¿Viniste a La Luna de la Cosecha de La Voz y la pasaste genial? ¿Te la perdiste?

    No te pierdas esta última oportunidad de celebrar el 18 aniversario de La Voz. Disfruta del tango y folclore argentino con Eduardo Parra, quien dará un concierto y también nos enseñará a bailar tango. También tendremos la música tradicional veracruzana Son Jarocho en manos del grupo Ameyal de Maria y Mateo. Por supuesto, habrá comida, ¡y karaoke! Participa si te animas. 

    Y lo más importante: reconoceremos públicamente a varios miembros de la comunidad que han sido nominados por sus pares por su dedicado servicio a la comunidad inmigrante hispana del Valle del Hudson: Claudette Aldebot, Maria Cabrera, Víctor Cueva, Adelio Ramírez, Felipe Santos y Joan Ruiz Werkema. Será una noche inolvidable. 

    Gracias a los patrocinadores de la celebración de nuestro aniversario:

    Nivel Luna Llena: Hudson Valley Credit Union, Radio Kingston, Ulster Savings Bank, St. Catherine Center for Children 

    Nivel Cosecha: M&T Bank, Nuvance, Sun River, SUNY Ulster

    Nivel Comunidad: Hudson Valley Hospice, RUPCO

     

  • Thursday, September 22, 2022 
      Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library  4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
    Please join us for a reception to celebrate journalist Alvin Patrick's exhibit of selected first editions and rare books from his private collection. This exhibit, Faces of the Struggle: Frontispiece Portraits in African American Literature (1834 to 1949), features the portraits of some of the greatest civil rights activists of the 19th and 20th centuries including, Solomon Northup, Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley, and Gwendolyn Brooks. 


    Download: APatrick-digital.pdf
  • Wednesday, September 7, 2022 
    A Lecture by ilija Trojanow
    Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  5:30 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
    "Each day we are sold different versions of yesterday, but rarely offered a different tomorrow. The apocalypse streams into every household at a flat rate. In an era of dystopian forebodings, the future can no longer be taken for granted, and optimism is under siege. It seems high time for a reboot of utopian literature, in which a space that is not, may yet come to be in the future. We are near forgetting that history is not a foregone conclusion, and that fatalism is the last refuge of the coward. How we shape the future lies in our own hands, but with the prerequisite that we are ready to think ahead, into the unknown and uncertain, imagining alternatives to given paradigms. If the seeds of human progress are indeed planted by ideas before they can blossom into transformations, utopian narratives are of existential importance." Our guest, Ilija Trojanow, has spent the past  several years working on a utopian novel and exploring the history of Utopia. At a time when we reckon with our destruction of the natural world and of imagination, Trojanow's work encourages us to scrub clear our overclouded skies and to ask ourselves: what is literature if not unshackled fancy?

  • Tuesday, September 6, 2022 
    Campus Center, Weis Cinema  5:30 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
    This event brings together in person on the Bard campus in Annandale three esteemed writers—Nuruddin Farah, Ilija Trojanow, and Aleksandar Hemon—to read from and discuss their work. As suggested by the titles North of Dawn (Farah) and Nowhere Man (Hemon), all three writers are concerned in their work with questions of place and displacement, of cultural difference and shared humanity, and of what Trojanow in his recent work calls “utopian narratives.” Each also has deep personal and professional connections to more than one language, and together they comprise a knowledge of literatures that is truly stunning in its diversity, including works composed in Arabic, Bulgarian, German, Serbo-Croation, and Somali, among other languages. All three authors are also active in a plurality of genres and media, which taken together includes novels, short stories, criticism, plays, film and television scripts, and music. On this evening, they will read and discuss their work and explore common concerns and points of difference, and will invite the audience to join in the conversation

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