African/African American Studies

The program in African/African American Studies provides a cross cultural and comparative framework for systematically studying the traditions and experiences of Africans in the New and Old worlds. Students in this program are encouraged to develop their analytic, research and literary skills through a critical study of patterns of Western and African civilizations in their interwoven complexity. In addition to the courses offered by the program itself, several courses taught at Carleton have a bearing on African/African American studies. Students majoring in African/African American studies have been able to create their own individual programs out of the available Carleton offerings, independent study, and, in some cases, off-campus study. The program also offers a concentration option: in this case the study of the diaspora of African-derived peoples and cultures is rooted both in the mastery of a particular discipline (in the Social Sciences, Arts and Literature, or the Humanities, for example) and in relevant course work that is cross-cultural and interdisciplinary. In the context of Carleton College's commitment to liberal arts education, the program provides a forum for addressing topics such as cultural and artistic creativity, construction of self, marginality, responses to exclusion, and the conjunction of issues related to gender, class, race, and ethnicity.