African American Studies

Caroline B. Jackson Smith, Associate Professor of Theater and African American Studies; Department Chair

Pamela Brooks, Associate Professor of African American Studies

Johnny Coleman, Associate Professor of Art and African American Studies

Justin Emeka, Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater and African American Studies

Meredith M. Gadsby, Assistant Professor of African American Studies

Gordon Gill, Assistant Professor of African American Studies

James Millette, Professor of African American Studies

Courtney Patterson, Faculty-in-Residence

Booker C. Peek, Associate Professor of African American Studies

Yakubu Saaka, Professor of African American Studies

Adenike M. Sharpley, Lecturer in Theater and Dance and African American Studies and Artist-in-Residence

The African American Studies Department is a multidisciplinary program of study that seeks, through the humanities and social sciences, to explore key aspects of the Black experience in a systematic and structurally integrated fashion. Its broad educational purposes are to engender among all students an intellectual appreciation of life, culture and history in Africa,the Americas and the Diaspora; to enrich the Oberlin College curriculum; and to increase the relevance of an Oberlin education to a culturally diverse world. Thus, the Department strives to provide the general student body with substantive knowledge of the Africana experience and to provide majors with a range of critical, intellectual, artistic and evaluative skills useful in any of their future pursuits. The department is aided in its efforts by the Afrikan Heritage House, which serves as the College’s Black communal and cultural center.

Curriculum

The African American Studies curriculum offers extensive study of the Black experience in a diasporic setting, including but not limited to, Africa, North America, and the Caribbean. These offerings are arranged in three categories: introductory, intermediate, and advanced. All introductory courses are open without prerequisite, except as indicated in the course description. African American Studies 101 and other beginning courses may serve as prerequisites to all intermediate and advanced courses.