Featured Content Slideshow

Keynote Speaker Alexis Pauline Gumbs

M. Jacqui Alexander Lecture 4/18

The African Diaspora Cluster presents the 4th annual M. Jacqui Alexander Lecture in African Diaspora Studies. The event will take place on April 18 at 4pm in Skyline Commons featuring Alexis Pauline Gumbs.

Orange poster with brown and white text with the locations of the book tour stops

Congratulation Professor Williams

Chair of the AAAS Department Professor Chad Williams is celebrating the release of his latest book "The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World War" with a book tour!

A list of the AAAS Spring Events

Save the Date

The AAAS Department is excited to have announce our Spring Events! We will have many different panels and conversations that are engaging and educating so please save the date.

Flyer with the title of the event, name of the panelist, and time and location

Our Bodies, Our Voices, Our Choices: Black Women and Health Justice

AAAS Prof. Muigai will be in conversation with Tufts University's Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha, University of Pennsylvania's Hafeeza Anchrum, and Providence College's Aishah Scott on April 25 in Reading Room in Mandel Center at 4pm.

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.

If you are considering a AAAS major or minor, please contact Chair and Undergraduate Advising Head Prof. Chad Williams.

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