Yale University Black Studies

Yale University Black Studies The Black Studies Department at Yale University

The Black Studies Department examines, from numerous disciplinary perspectives, the experiences of people of African descent in Black Atlantic societies, including the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Courses explore the innovative, complex, and distinctively African American social structures and cultural traditions that Africans in the diaspora have created. Students are exposed to the historical, cultural, political, economic, and social development of people of African descent. Emphasizing a diasporic framework of analysis, the department demands that students acquire both an analytic ability rooted in a traditional discipline and interdisciplinary skills of investigation and research. Black Studies offers training of special interest to those considering admission to graduate or professional schools and careers in education, journalism, law, business management, city planning, international relations, politics, psychology, publishing, or social work. The department's interdisciplinary structure offers students an opportunity to satisfy the increasingly rigorous expectations of admissions committees and prospective employers for a broad liberal arts perspective that complements specialized knowledge of a field.

he Department of Black Studies at Yale University warmly welcomes you to the Fall 2026 Endeavors Colloquium Seminar Seri...
08/24/2026

he Department of Black Studies at Yale University warmly welcomes you to the Fall 2026 Endeavors Colloquium Seminar Series.

The seminar series will take place on Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at:

Gordon Parks Room 201
81 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511

A light lunch will be provided.
Fall 2026 Seminar Schedule

September 17, 2026
Rashauna Johnson (link is external), Professor of History, University of Chicago

Kin in the Cotton Fields: A Blues History of Black Lijfe
This talk uses archival research and family memories to illuminate the lives and times of select figures who died and, critically, also lived in the long shadow of King Cotton. Drawing on select moments in the history of the author’s maternal grandmother’s birthplace, Louisiana’s Feliciana region, it meditates on the deeply contingent experiences of 19th-century “development” and “progress” and the ways those divergent experiences and the memories to which they gave rise haunt us all.

Fall 2026 Endeavors Colloquium Seminar SeriesThe Department of Black Studies at Yale University warmly welcomes you to t...
08/24/2026

Fall 2026 Endeavors Colloquium Seminar Series

The Department of Black Studies at Yale University warmly welcomes you to the Fall 2026 Endeavors Colloquium Seminar Series.

The seminar series will take place on Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at:

Gordon Parks Room 201
81 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511

A light lunch will be provided.

Fall 2026 Seminar Schedule

September 17, 2026
Rashauna Johnson
Professor of History, University of Chicago

October 8, 2026
Petal Samuel
Associate Professor of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies, UNC Chapel Hill

November 5, 2026
Adom Getachew
Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
November 19, 2026

Lauren Whitehurst
Assistant Professor, Yale University

We look forward to welcoming faculty, students, staff, and members of the Yale community to this semester’s conversations.

05/19/2026

Celebrating the Class of 2026 🎓✨

We were thrilled to our graduating seniors and our newly minted Ph.D. students at the 2026 Commencement! We are so proud of all that these Black Studies scholars have accomplished and can’t wait to see what’s next!

We are also thrilled to recognize this year’s department prize winners:

The Pickens Prize, awarded in memory of William Pickens ’04 for outstanding senior essays in African and African American Studies, was awarded to Prentiss Patrick-Carter for “a far away machine.”

The Sylvia Ardyn Boone Prize, awarded for the best written work by a Yale student on African or African American art, is jointly administered by the History of Art and African American Studies Departments. Established by Vera Wells ’71 in honor of Sylvia Ardyn Boone, a pioneering scholar of African and women’s art and the first African American woman granted tenure at Yale, celebrates Boone’s legacy. This year’s prize was awarded to Alex Fiahlo for the dissertation “Apertures onto AIDS: Black Q***r Photography and the Art History of the Storage Unit.”

Please join us in celebrating these remarkable achievements! 👏

Thursday, March 26, the Black Studies Endeavors Seminar Series has been canceled.We thank you for your continued support...
03/25/2026

Thursday, March 26, the Black Studies Endeavors Seminar Series has been canceled.

We thank you for your continued support and participation. We look forward to welcoming you to our final Spring Endeavors Seminar Series event on April 16, featuring guest speaker Allison Curseen.

03/13/2026

Address

81 Wall Street
New Haven, CT
06511

Telephone

+12034321177

Website

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