Department of African American Studies at Illinois-Urbana Champaign

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Department of African American Studies at Illinois-Urbana Champaign

Now, nearly forty years later, a movement has grown into a department. In June 2008, African American Studies became the Department of African American Studies.

The Department of African American Studies is comprised of twelve core faculty, a visiting assistant professor, one postdoctoral research associate, a librarian and bibliographer, two staff, and teaching/research assistants. African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign originated in 1969 as the academic branch of the Faculty Student Commission on Afro-American Life an

d Culture. In 1970, the Faculty Student Commission was dissolved and replaced by the Afro-American Studies Commission, which included three branches: academic, cultural, and service, that reported directly to the Vice Chancellor. During the 1974-75 academic year, the Afro-American Academic Program was transferred to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences where it received the title Afro-American Studies and Research Program, and later, African American Studies and Research Program (African American Studies).

01/19/2021

Congratulations A’ja Wilson! We are very proud of you. 👏🏾👏🏾

The South Carolina women’s basketball great became just the second athlete, and the first woman, to have a statue on USC’s campus.

12/18/2020

Congratulations!!

Two University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors – Bobby Smith II (professor of African American studies) and Eduardo Ledesma (professor of Spanish and Portuguese) have been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowships.

Smith’s project “Race, Civil Rights, and Food Access in the Mississippi Delta” is the first book to analyze the interaction between oppressive and emancipatory practices of food power, as exercised in the Mississippi Delta from the civil rights era to today.

Ledesma’s project “Visually Impaired Filmmakers and Technologies of Sight” is the first book to study how visually impaired filmmakers use digital media both to make visible the experience of disability and to destabilize stereotypes about the blind.

(Pictured: (1) Smith & (2) Ledesma)

University of Illinois professors Bobby Smith II and Eduardo Ledesma have been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships for 2021.

12/17/2020

Negro League Baseball from 1920-1948 has been granted Major League status.

11/29/2020

Chadwick Boseman would have turned 44 today. Happy birthday King!

11/19/2020

🙌🏾 Setting high standards! Congratulations, Ms. Emory Pruitt!

She’s living her teen dreams! Emory Pruitt recently turned 16-years-old but has already made history, becoming one of Clark Atlanta University’s youngest students in the fall 2020 class. At just 15, she was accepted to the historically Black College in Atlanta. Pruitt graduated with a 3.7 GPA, b...

11/09/2020

Congratulations, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris!

10/07/2020

Happy 100th birthday, Nurse Nancy Leftenant-Colon!

A centennial celebration! The first Black woman to be accepted into the U.S. Army Corps recently celebrated her 100th birthday, Newsday reports. Nancy Leftenant-Colon, a nurse who served active duty in the U.S. Army Air Corps recently celebrated her 100th birthday. Colon made history as the first Bl...

10/05/2020

Join in! Zoom workshop on Wednesday, October 7th @ 7pm.

Join Dr. Koritha Mitchell for a Zoom workshop on ethical teaching entitled Violence in U.S. Education: Approaches & Practices on October 7 at 7pm as part of her The Center for Advanced Study at Illinois residency!
Register here: https://bit.ly/EthicalTeaching
Department of African American Studies at Illinois-Urbana Champaign, Education at Illinois, Humanities Research Institute at Illinois, Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, History at Illinois, Illinois Theatre, U of Illinois English Department

09/21/2020

Let the games begin! Congratulations Coach Sanders!

Deion Sanders is set to be a college football head coach. After multiple reports emerged in recent days, FCS-level Jackson State confirmed Monday that it has hired Sanders, the Hall of Fame defensive back. Sanders, 53, has never been on a college football coaching staff. Most of Sander

09/20/2020

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“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.” - Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Photo Credit:

09/13/2020

👏🏾👏🏾

Move over Instacart! In the months following the country’s shutdown due to the pandemic, Rhandi and Jonathan Altidor noticed something was missing in the food delivery market — Black grocers. Their solution? The couple decided to bridge the gap with The Better Buggy, a grocery delivery service f...

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Website

http://www.afro.illinois.edu/

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