FACULTY:
Courtney Thompson, Chair
Omar Dieng
Miriam Kilimo
Lee McBride
Africana Studies is an academic discipline rooted in a political, social, historical, and cultural context that seeks to introduce students to knowledge and perspectives about people of African descent and the African Diaspora that are often overlooked in traditional disciplines. As a corrective, Africana Studies challenges the long-standing epistemic and paradigmatic approaches of traditional disciplines to the study of people of African descent and emphasizes Black agency and struggles for equality and freedom.
Our interdisciplinary trained faculty help students investigate, analyze, and develop multidisciplinary competencies to better understand the historical and contemporary experiences of Black people in the global world. Since its inception in 1968, the Department of Africana Studies (formerly the Black Studies Program) has prepared College of Wooster graduates to succeed and become leaders in a multicultural world.
By the end of the senior year, an Africana Studies graduate will be able to: discuss the history, development, and significance of Africana Studies as a discipline; analyze the experiences and agency of people of African descent relative to race, gender, class, sexuality, politics, migration, nationalism, and resistance from a global perspective; use appropriate methods of inquiry rooted in Afrocentric theory, Black feminist theory, critical race theory, or other relevant theoretical framework to critically evaluate topics relevant to the African Diaspora; and research, organize, and draft a well-written thesis project on an approved topic relevant to the African Diaspora.
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