加州大學-伯克利

The undergraduate degree program in African American Studies exposes students to the social, political, and cultural history of African-descended people in the modern world. While its primary focus is on the United States, the program’s conceptual framework places African Americans within a broader global, diasporas’ dialogue about the evolving function of race in history as well as in the contemporary moment. With its interdisciplinary strengths in history, culture, and social and political institutions, the major provides students with skills in research, criticism, and writing that our graduates have taken to a variety of professional paths, including teaching, government and policy work, employment in mass media, professional schools (law, medicine, business), and graduate study in multiple fields.

Learning Goals for the Major

• Introduce students to the study of African American culture through the humanities by examining the production and social function of literature, music, visual arts, and performance. Explore the unique role that African American culture has had in defining and responding to larger constructs of American culture.
• Trace the history of Africa from the earliest times (or prehistory) to the early modern period. Examine various aspects of pre-colonial African life and emphasize cultural and demographic themes. Equip students with the intellectual tools for intelligently discussing African history in both academic and nonacademic settings.
• Gain a critical awareness about twentieth-century Africa and give due attention to postcolonial social, political, and economic processes in the general context of Africans' attempts to remake their world in the postcolonial era.
• Examine the history (employment, migration, family life, culture, social institutions, and protest traditions) of African Americans since 1865. Acquire particular attention to the interplay between race, class, and gender.
• Examine the political, social, and intellectual origins of the discipline and assess the disciplinary and institutional status of African American studies.
• Acquire a range of research methods as they are applied to the study of African American communities with the main focus on qualitative methods.
• Obtain familiarity with basic canon texts in African American studies.
• Gain advanced knowledge of a particular area of specialization (either interdisciplinary or disciplinary).

For honors students, successful completion of an undergraduate thesis to demonstrate research, analytical, and theoretical skills related to an area of specialization.

Honors Program

To be eligible for admission to the honors program, a student must have completed at least two semesters at UC Berkeley and have attained senior standing with a GPA of 3.3 or higher in all University work, as well as a 3.5 GPA or higher in the African American Studies major. Students in the program are required to take AFRICAM 195 senior capstone course to be completed in the fall semester of their senior year and must complete AFRICAM 100 and 101 prerequisite for AFRICAM 195 (to be taken prior to or concurrently with AFRICAM 195). Students must receive a minimum of a B or above in AFRICAM 195 to enroll into AFRICAM H195 (Honors Thesis) the following semester culminating in the completion of a senior honors thesis.