African American Studies @ WFU
African American Studies at Wake Forest University is a signature academic program that:
- Leverages the University’s distinctive commitment “to the pursuit of excellence in the liberal arts” while educating a new generation of scholars and citizens committed to serving humanity
- Employs a broad humanistic framework in providing a novel intellectual space for students and scholars to develop new knowledge in their attempt “to ask and answer the fundamental questions of human existence”
- Distinguishes its approach to the discipline by its unique focus on the cultures, knowledges, and expressions of African descended people in the southern United States and their global reverberations.
“I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition – about what we can endure, dream, fail at, and still survive.”
– Maya Angelou
AAS@Wake
African American Studies is integral to a liberal arts education.
Academics
Learn more about our signature African American Studies program and see what’s being offered this spring.
Faculty
Meet our distinguished African American Studies faculty.
2023 AWFUBA/AAS Annual Homecoming Lecture:
The War on Black Studies:
Education, Politics, and the Fate of Democracy
The 2023 AWFUBA/AAS Annual Homecoming Lecture, “The War on Black Studies”: Education, Politics, and the Fate of Democracy,” features a public conversation with Professor Claire Crawford, Wake Forest University, Professor Daniel Henry, Wake Forest University, and Professor Darius Bost, University of Illinois Chicago. The conversation was moderated by Dean Corey D. B. Walker, Dean of the School of Divinity, Wake Forest Professor of the Humanities, and Director of the Program in African American Studies, Wake Forest University. This program was sponsored by the Association of Wake Forest University Black Alumni and the Program in African American Studies.
News
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The next session of the 2024 CPA Book Friday! will take place on August 2nd at noon EST. Join us for a presentation by editors Julia S. Jordan-Zachery and Shamara Wyllie Alhassan on “Black Women and da ’Rona.” Register here: https://tinyurl.com/CPA-BookFriday.
Today, we honor Congressman #JohnLewis, a civil rights titan who marched for #votingrights in #Selma with Dr. #MartinLutherKingJr. On this 4th anniversary of his passing, we celebrate Congressman Lewis’s courageous leadership, commitment to justice, and legacy of #goodtrouble.
The quiet beauty of Summer in the Forest. #MotherSoDear
Happy 4th of July from @WFUAfAmStudies!
Dr. Henry Louis Gates To Receive Spingarn Award At 2024 NAACP Meeting, Las Vegas – The New Journal and Guide
Transition: The Magazine of Africa and the Diaspora | 135: Species – tracking the intimate relationship of the Diaspora to all forms of life | Read more here: https://transitionmagazine.fas.harvard.edu/home/current-issue/
On this day in 1917, white mobs in East St. Louis, IL, attacked Black residents and destroyed their homes. Up to 200 Black men, women, and children were shot, beaten to death, or burned alive.
“Even in the midst of crisis, the flowers bloom, especially in moments of crisis, their blooming is a reminder of something that transcends the moment, a reminder of a deep, deep sense of time reaching back and stretching forward.” — Farah Jasmine Griffin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtC_QOpNnhg&list=PLwpIhcP1Fqo4YuNc1fElY_ObEBzLOU92Y
#OnThisDay, 60 years ago, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law. The law gave the federal government a new role in desegregating schools and other public facilities.
