Welcome

The Department of African American Studies offers students at Ohio University multi-disciplinary scholars and scholarship focused on the role African Americans have played and continue to play in shaping the history, culture, and institutions of our country.

A student who graduates with a major or minor in African American Studies will be equipped to:

• Engage in rigorous thinking, research, analysis, and synthesis of matters pertaining to the African American experience in the United States.
• Discuss intelligently and with respect for the opinions and personhood of others, present-day controversies surrounding race and ethnicity in the United States. Such a student will have developed this essential 21st-century skill based on: (a) having examined the legal, political, economic, cultural, and historical antecedents of such issues; and (b) having learned how inextricably intertwined such matters are.
• Understand, value, and manage diversity in the multicultural communities and workplaces that will typify life in 21st-century America.

A degree in African American Studies, like all liberal-arts degrees, provides students with the foundation to understand the world, how it functions, their responsibilities and opportunities in the world, and how to have an impact on the world ... globally and locally. As is true for most liberal-arts majors and minors, African American Studies majors and minors have many possible career paths, most of which will require further study. The following are some of the possible career paths for African American Studies majors and minors: