Featured Content Slideshow

Image of a book titled the culture trap on the left, a headshot of Derron Wallace on the right.

Book Celebration for The Culture Trap

The Culture Trap, written by Brandeis Professor Derron Wallace, critically examines how culture is sometimes used as a justification for racism in schools, reinforcing racial, class, and gender inequalities in education.

Black and white image of Professor Spillers. She is resting her head on her hand.

5th Annual M. Jacqui Alexander Lecture In African Diaspora Studies: A Small Drama of Words

Professor Hortense Spillers, PhD’74 will be in conversation with African and African American Studies Professor Shoniqua Roach.

Cover of Prof. Smith, Prof Yacob-Haliso, and Prof. Williams books

Professor Book Release

Professor Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso has released her latest book, African Refugees, in January 2023. Professor Chad Williams and Faith Smith will release their books, The Wounded World and Strolling in the Ruins, respectively in April 2023.

cover of AAAS Newsletter with 5 individuals

AAAS Newsletter

If interested in obtaining newsletter, please email AAAS Admin Mason at masonr@brandeis.edu

Prof. Smith

Congratulations Prof. Faith Smith

Prof. Faith Smith been named a W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. She will be working on DreadKin, a book-length study of literary and visual cultures.

African, African American and Caribbean thinkers have played a major role in defining the critical issues of our time, just as the cultures of Africans and their descendants have transformed the cultures of the Americas and the world.

A concentration in African and African American studies (AAAS) allows you to explore intellectual, cultural, economic, political, social and historical issues related to Africans and people of African descent. Courses are drawn from the humanities and social sciences. Students will develop the analytical tools to read different kinds of texts, to write persuasively and to participate knowledgeably in debates about developments across the African continent, in the Americas and globally.

Undergraduate Program

Our department prides itself on the diversity of disciplines represented by our faculty, which include anthropology, creative arts, economics, history, literature, music, politics and more.

In addition to Introduction to African and African American Studies, AAAS majors take eight courses in history, the arts, social sciences, Africa and African American or the Americas. Students also take an elective, which can be a regularly offered course or a senior essay, senior thesis or independent study.

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