Center for Gender, Race, and Area Studies

Africana Studies, concentration

Ousmane Power Greene leading a class discussion in the History of Hip Hop class

Transform your worldview

From ancient kingdoms to modern movements, Africans and people of the diaspora have fundamentally shaped how humanity thinks, creates, and fights for justice.

Africana Studies illuminates these profound contributions and their continuing influence—tracing paths between the countless voices that have redefined literature, philosophy, politics, and social change. This field of study invites you to discover a rich tapestry of human achievement while developing new ways of seeing the world through lenses of resilience, creativity, and interconnection.

Why Africana Studies at Clark?

As a student in the Africana studies concentration, you’ll explore the lives of people of African ancestry both in Africa and around the world, with a special focus on sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. In the process, you’ll develop a cultural, historical, political, social, and geographical awareness of the ways people of African descent have lived, worked, created, and fought for self-definition and self-determination.

You’ll join a community of faculty and students from a wide range of disciplines who study diverse, disadvantaged, or marginalized societies and populations, with an emphasis on promoting social justice.

While you can combine this concentration with any major, it’s an especially good complement to majors like community, youth, and education studies; French; geography; history; international development and social change; political science; sociology; and women’s and gender studies.

Requirements

Six courses are required to complete the Africana Studies concentration:

Two Core Courses which survey African American history and literature.
Three Elective Courses carrying the Africana Studies attribute.
One Advanced Research Course carrying the Africana Studies attribute.

Hands-On Learning

Leaders from Clark University and African Community Education (ACE), a Worcester agency that works to help African refugee and immigrant youth and families achieve educational and social stability shake hands at a ceremony marking their collaboration. — Students and faculty collaborate frequently with African Community Education (ACE), a Worcester agency that works to help African refugee and immigrant youth and families achieve educational and social stability.

As a complement to the Africana Studies concentration, you can engage in a variety of related experiential learning opportunities, including internships, study abroad, and research.