Africana Studies

The Department of Africana Studies at Brown University is the intellectual center for faculty and students interested in the critical study of the artistic, cultural, historical, literary and theoretical expressions of the peoples and cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora. The department has one of the leading faculties in the discipline. Members of the faculty have received many prestigious honors and awards such as the Gish Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship and the MacArthur Fellowship, in addition to successfully competing for fellowships and grants from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Science Foundation.

The Ph.D. program in Africana Studies provides a firm base for graduate students to create new and innovative knowledge within the discipline as well as develop cutting-edge scholarship that contributes to the broader academy and public life. Graduate students in the program receive rigorous training in the discipline of Africana Studies and the theories and methods of interdisciplinary work, with an acute focus on race, class, gender, and sexuality, while being critically conversant with the methods and theories of other academic disciplines. The goal of the program is to prepare students to become skilled and informed scholars and educators poised to make significant contributions to academic and nonacademic communities and initiate cultural and social policies with humanitarian objectives informed by critical thinking and global perspectives on social and human development.

The department is the home of the C.L.R. James Journal, the official journal of the Caribbean Philosophy Association, and Rites and Reason Theatre, a forum for arts and ideas that brings together artists and scholars to collaborate on modes of expression in communicating new thoughts and ideas about the world and human existence. The department's Trilateral Reconnection Project offers graduate students the opportunity to research and study at the University of Cape Town, South Africa and the University of the West Indies, Mona. Africana Studies graduate students work closely with faculty in a number of Brown University departments including American Studies, Anthropology, Comparative Literature, English, History, and Modern Culture and Media and are able to participate in the exchange scholar program that enables Brown graduate students to take courses in the graduate schools of other participating institutions, including the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, MIT, Princeton University, Stanford University, and Yale University.

• Writing Sample: Required (20–25 pages)
• GRE General: Required
• GRE Subject: Not Required

Application Deadline: December 15