Major


Add a 31 credit major in African and African Diaspora Studies and expand your perspective through interdisciplinary elective course options. The AADS major offers courses in collaboration with departments like Communications, History, Sociology, Philosophy, Music and more. Choose between two tracks to guide your studies and to supplement the Black Atlantic courses that have a global framework putting different geographical regions of the world in conversation with one another within the African Diaspora

Major Requirements:

 
  • AADS majors can have a second major as long as the student stays in compliance with the University’s policies regarding second majors.
  • In addition to taking AADS 1110 “Introduction to African Diaspora Studies” (3 credits) and AADS 6600 “Senior Seminar” (4 credits), students pursuing an AADS major need to take 8 additional elective courses, and only two of which can be a 1000-level course.
  • AADS majors must take six of their eight elective courses in one track and their remaining two in the other. 
  • Students’ elective courses may not fall exclusively in Social Science (Communication, History, Political Science, or Sociology) or Humanities (Art History, English, Music, Philosophy, Romance Languages and Literatures, or Theater) departments.

31 Credits

Equivalent to 10 full-semester courses

2 Major Tracks

Choose between Intellectual Traditions and Cultural Production and Politics and Social Inquiry

4 Black Atlantic Courses

A global framework that puts different geographical regions of the world in conversation with one another within the African Diaspora

 


AADS Major Tracks and Black Atlantic Courses

The course listings provide available courses for both Intellectual Traditions and Production (ITCP) and Politics and Social Inquiry (PSI), as well as Black Atlantic courses. While both tracks are rooted in the interdisciplinary study of the African Diaspora, the Intellectual Traditions and Cultural Production track will be for those students most interested in pursuing careers and graduate studies typically associated with the humanities; while the Politics and Social Inquiry track will attract students with more social science curiosities.


Sample Schedules

Students in the Intellectual Traditions and Cultural Production track examine Black intellectual traditions, expressive forms, and modes of cultural analysis and cultural criticism primarily (but not exclusively) based on textual analyses.

In the Politics and Social Inquiry track students examine the development of institutions, measure inequality, and identify societal patterns utilizing primarily (but not exclusively) historical and social science techniques.