Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of African and African American Studies

More than four decades ago Harvard University launched what is now the Department of African and African American Studies. This Department is dedicated to the passionate pursuit of one of the great and inspiring missions of human letters: bringing forward in full measure, the depth, richness, and complexity of the African and African American experience. In service of this ambition the Department offers courses and conducts research that explores the contributions, challenges, strivings, and achievements of those of African ancestry. This includes a vigorous and expansive engagement with all domains of life on the African continent as well as equal dedication to casting as much light as possible on the farthest reaches of the African diaspora and the movements, lives, and legacies of peoples of African ancestry around the globe.

The department is truly multidisciplinary. Its faculty, like the mission of African and African American Studies itself, spans the social sciences and humanities. Thus, the Department's courses reach from Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, Sociology, and Psychology, to Art, Music, History, Language and Linguistics, Women, Sexuality and Gender studies as well as Literature and Philosophy. Its scope is, likewise, genuinely global. The department’s faculty reflect genuine depth of expertise not only in the U.S. and the African Continent but increasingly in the Afro-Latin American world and the Caribbean.