Message From the Chair

Greetings to all including visitors to the Department of African American Studies’ website!!!! On behalf of the Department, I extend a warm welcome to all especially to our matriculating students and to our incoming undergraduate majors and minors, the department’s incoming graduate student cohort, and to our Chancellor Postdoctoral Fellow! Our Department offer students a wide-range of courses including those of historical and conceptual significance, and with an interdisciplinary and theoretical lens for understanding the development of the African American experience and the African Diaspora from a global and transcultural perspective. As such, the Department has formal linkages to various disciplines including anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, history, law, literature, music, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology. In doing so, faculty provides our students with courses ranging from African studies, art, education, ethnomusicology, geography, information studies, management, political economy, psychology, public health, religious studies, society and genetics, theater to world arts and cultures|dance. Additionally, the Department has over the years supported community-engagement projects that reflect faculty’s research in which we hope to continue doing so with thoughtful public programming and events for the academic year.

If you are interested in knowing more about the Department of African American Studies, please visit other areas on the website including “Why African American Studies” and how prospective students might wish to pursue a Bachelor of Arts degree or a minor in African American Studies, a Master of Arts degree or the distinct joint Master of Arts-Juris Doctor degree. Please contact our Student Affairs Officer for more information about these educational opportunities.

Finally, you will also find on our website how you might wish to get and stay involved with the department in a multitude of ways. Please visit our Tuesday Giving page. With your outpouring support here, we are able to continue assisting our students in their educational journey here at UCLA. Additionally, I encourage you to also visit our News, Black Calendar, Gallery sections on the website, and the department’s YouTube channel that showcase our students, faculty, and our most memorable public events.

We look forward to an exciting and productive school year and seeing you at some of our many events and programs throughout the year! As always, Go Bruins!!!!

Cheryl L Keyes, PhD

Professor and Chair of the Department of African American Studies