The Department of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison offers students an opportunity to study those aspects of black history, culture, and society in ideal interdisciplinary models that reconstruct African American life. It challenges students to critically examine facts and issues that are historically and contemporaneously relevant to the African American experience. The department offers an undergraduate major and certificate.

The mission of the Department of African Cultural Studies is to research and teach the languages and expressive cultures of Africa and Africans around the world. Our faculty specialize in literature, music, film, critical applied linguistics, drama, diaspora studies, and new media. Our undergraduate program emphasizes the development and application of analytical, linguistic, and methodological tools that enable students to work effectively and imaginatively across regions, languages, cultural forms, methodologies, and disciplines. A student majoring in African Cultural Studies is prepared for careers across the globe!

The African American and African Diaspora Studies Program is offered under the auspices of the Interdisciplinary Studies unit of the College of Liberal Arts. Students may major or minor in African American and African Diaspora Studies. The program in African American and African Diaspora Studies is designed to provide students with the critical tools required, and to expose them to the historical knowledge and current research necessary, for an informed understanding of the Afro-American experience today. The program is built around a core of courses that systematically document critical aspects of the Afro-American experience from its antecedents in antiquity to the prominent issues of the present day.

Our program draws from expertise in the fields of anthropology, gender studies, history, language and literature, music and the performing arts, international studies, and sociology. In doing so, we address critical questions concerning cultural and intellectual production, gender, race, ethnicity, diversity, empowerment, global justice, and systemic violence.

This major introduces students to the social, cultural, historical, and artistic dimensions of global African Diaspora and Black communities in the United States, Africa, Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Pacific regions of the world.

The American Studies major provides an interdisciplinary curriculum that exposes students to government, English, history, music and sociology. Students develop analytical, critical thinking, and writing skills while gaining knowledge about American culture and society.

The Afro-American studies major is ideal for students who want to develop a deep understanding of the history and culture of Black people in Africa and the Americas. You’ll gain skills in project development, research and analysis, interpersonal and cross-cultural communication, critical thinking, and writing, preparing you to meet the complex challenges that face our communities, country, and the world.

Looking for a valuable skill that helps people? With a minor in American Sign Language (ASL), you will gain conversational skills and better understand the way the Deaf community lives, thinks and communicates.