Department of African American Studies

College of Letters & Science
Book covers of, from left, Our Separate Ways, Dark Work, In Search of Power, Double-Consciousness Double Bind, Window on Freedom
Book covers of, from left, of Free Joan Little, Regina Anderson Andrews Harlem Renaissance Librarian, Rising Wind, The Emancipation Circuit, and Confessions of a Slot Machine Queen
Sandra Adell speaking to a classroom full of students
Sandra Adell, professor of Afro-American Studies, teaches a Masterpieces of Afro-American Literature class in the Helen C. White Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Feb. 22, 2017. Adell is one of twelve 2017 Distinguished Teaching Award recipients. (Photo by Jeff Miller/UW-Madison)

The Department of African American Studies is committed to bringing academic research to the broadest possible audience, within and beyond the walls of the university. We believe that the deepest understanding of the complex reality of race in America requires a truly interdisciplinary approach, one that draws on history and literature, the social sciences and the arts.

Approved by the Board of Regents in 1970, the Department of African American Studies (formerly Afro-American Studies) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is an outgrowth of the student concern for relevance in higher education which was so dramatically evidenced on many college campuses during the late 1960s. Today, the department offers a wide variety of courses leading to both undergraduate and graduate degrees and is one of the most successful programs in the country.

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