Doctoral ProgramField: African Diaspora
New York University’s Department of History includes a Ph.D. field in the study of the African Diaspora. As the African Diaspora is as much a conceptual landscape as anything else, the field encourages research agendas that explore connections involving communities of the African-descended that extend beyond geopolitical boundaries, as well as the interrogation of relationships of varying nature and scope with Africa. Lines of inquiry can extend in any direction, and can focus on the cultural, social, political, scientific, and economic, or on any combination thereof.
Study of the African Diaspora at NYU is linked closely to the study of Africa, a separate but related Ph.D course of study. Students in the African Diaspora acquire a familiarity with the dimension of Africa most related to their interests, and their professional development is keenly shaped by the experience. This is by design.
While housed in History and fundamentally historical in approach and training, the study of the African Diaspora, to be successful, must necessarily be informed by methods and perspectives derived from disciplines outside of History. Interdisciplinarity, a method in its own right, is therefore embraced by the African Diaspora field.
Faculty. Faculty whose research and/or teaching relate most closely to the African Diaspora includes Fred Cooper, Ada Ferrer, Michael A. Gomez, Martha Hodes, Richard Hull, Michele Mitchell, Jennifer Morgan, Jeffrey Sammons, Nikhil Pal Singh, Barbara Weinstein and Pulitzer Prize recipient David Levering Lewis. Their combined interests are exceedingly broad and deep, stretching from the Americas to the Indian Ocean and from the early world to the present, encompassing a range of thematic specialties that can be sampled from their bios on the History website.
Related Programs. Within the History Department are a number of parallel Ph.D. fields whose curricula greatly enhance the study of the African Diaspora. In addition to the field in African History are those concerning the Atlantic World, Latin American and the Caribbean, Europe, and the U.S.
Outside of the History Department is a wealth of programs and scholars with which students of the African Diaspora can connect. In Africana Studies alone are Kamau Brathwaite, Manthia Diawara, Michael Dash, and Michael Ralph. By no means exhaustive, the list of faculty with related expertise includes Barbara Browning and Tavin Nyong’o in Performance Studies; Philip Brian Harper and Arlene Davila in American Studies; George Yudice in Latin American and Caribbean Studies; Deborah Willis in Photography; Troy Duster in Sociology; Gerard Aching and Sybille Fischer in Spanish and Portuguese; Kyra Gaunt and Jairo Moreno in Music; Renée Blake in Linguistics; Aisha Khan in Anthropology; Gage Averill in Ethnomusicology; and Ed Guerrero and Robert Stam in Cinema Studies.
Curriculum. The core curriculum in the African Diaspora includes Literature of the Field (an introduction into the methods and historiography of the field), a Research Seminar, and at least one elective. Students are also expected to take at least two courses in African history (or a related discipline). The African Diaspora field follows the normal sequence of course work, qualifying examinations, dissertation prospectus defense, and dissertation writing and defense, as laid out on the graduate program website. Students must also pass a foreign language proficiency exam.
Research Facilities in New York. There are probably no better facilities to study the African Diaspora than in New York City. In addition to the libraries of NYU, Columbia, and the research library of New York Public Library, there is the considerable repository that is the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. There are also resources at Rutgers and Princeton. In addition to conventional library facilities, students have access to the resources of the United Nations, the Museum of African Art, the Africana collections at the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Newark Museum of Art, among other such facilities.
Consortium. After their first year, NYU graduate students can take courses at Columbia, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, the New School, Rutgers University, and Princeton University.
New York City. The city itself is a vast, unparalleled resource for the study of the African Diaspora. In many ways, New York City is the center of that Diaspora, with communities and businesses of both Africans and the African-descended from all over the world. Culturally, the city is unequaled, providing students with the richest immersion imaginable into the multiple worlds of the African Diaspora.
Additional Information. Consult the home page of the History Department website for additional information on admissions and financial support.
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