Graduate Programs in African and African American Studies

The Department of Anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin offers M.A. and Ph.D. specializations in African Diaspora Studies. The African Diaspora Graduate Program in Anthropology, established in 1992 with the collaboration of the Center for African and African-American Studies, employs the theories and methods of anthropology in comparative research on African-descended communities. While recognizing the global nature of the African Diaspora, faculty research is primarily concentrated in North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa. Course offerings focus on transnational socioeconomic and cultural patterns, particularly as they relate to the legacies of slavery and the establishment of contemporary social and cultural formations.

CAAAS also offers a Doctoral Portfolio program, which offers graduate students an opportunity to build on its already outstanding and robust reputation in Africa and the African Diaspora. The Doctoral Portfolio acknowledges the complex human and material experiences and ramifications of an African Diaspora. Such an understanding requires a rigorous interdisciplinary approach that is uniquely possible at the University of Texas given the resources available in African, African American, and Latin American Studies. The objectives of the African and African American Studies Doctoral Portfolio are to use an advanced approach to interdisciplinary studies; a mapping of the intellectual breadth of African and African American Studies; the continued development of existing resources, including a sustained international and national reputation for intellectual rigor and productivity.