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African & African American Studies
Until lions have their
historians, tales of
the hunt shall always
glorify the hunter.
-African Proverb-
Welcome to the African and African American Studies Program website. This website is designed to
provide information for African and African American Studies Minors and students thinking
of majoring or minoring in African and African American Studies at Northeastern, as well as for people interested
in African and African American Studies.
The
Program
The African and African American Studies Minor (AFAM)
is the study, research, interpretation and dissemination of knowledge about
Africans both on the continent of Africa and
in the Diaspora. Interdisciplinary in both conception and practice, the AFAM
program is designed to critically examine the structure, organization, contributions,
and perspectives of Africa and its peoples
throughout the Diaspora. A major paradigm that informs the program’s curriculum
is an African-Centered epistemological framework that proceeds from a position
internal to the cultures of African peoples.
This approach is used concurrent with an awareness of and openness to
the variation and richness of the total human experience. The AFAM minor is
currently housed in the Sociology Department
The Importance of a Minor in
AFAM
Through
its interdisciplinary and multicultural approach to scholarship and learning,
the AFAM Studies Program seeks to contribute to students’ self-awareness and
attempts to broaden their perspectives in ways that allow them to understand
the world in its diversity and complexity.
It not only fosters intellectual and academic growth and excellence, but
also inclusiveness and the development of multicultural leaders and community
activists through its focus on African and African American constituencies and
communities, their conditions and contributions, and on human agency and social
change. Although the program focuses
specifically on the experiences of Africa and African
Americans, it is not just for African and African American students. Rather, the program’s broad vision and goal
of inclusiveness not only acknowledges the relation of African and African American
peoples within multicultural and global communities but also it cultivates a
respect for the multiracial and multicultural character of the common world
humanity. The program offers courses
that cross academic disciplines and that are intellectually and conceptually
far reaching for all students’
intellectual, academic, civic and professional growth and development.
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