Welcome, African American Studies

African American Studies

The African American Studies Program at Wesleyan offers a dynamic interdisciplinary approach to the study of people of African descent in the Black Atlantic world, especially in the United States and in the Caribbean. The major enables undergraduates to bring the methodologies, theories, and insights of diverse disciplines to bear on their studies of the history, literature, politics, culture, and art of peoples of African descent. Courses, which range from seminars to larger discussion classes, are informed by theoretical and empirical approaches and explore topics such as conceptualizations of race, issues of race and identity, as well as the social structures, cultural traditions, and political realities of Africans in the Diaspora.

News & Events

Congratulations to Bench Ansfield (Wes '08) on being a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for their fantastic book, "Born in Flames The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City".

Bench Ansfield is an assistant professor of history at Temple University. Ansfield holds a PhD in American studies from Yale University and won the Allan Nevins Prize for the best dissertation in American history from the Society of American Historians. They live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/bench-ansfield

Bench Ansfield Headshot

Professor Zaira Simone-Thompson joined Dr. Tracie Rogers to "explore how memory becomes a form of resistance, and how grief, personal, ancestral, and collective, functions as a methodology for healing, justice, and communal survival."

The inverview is available here.

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