Welcome to the Department of Afro-American
Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is dedicated to carrying on the vision of the elders and ancestors who devoted themselves to the highest standards of intellectual rigor and to the realization of a vision of true equality and opportunity. Like W.E.B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, John Hope Franklin, Zora Neale Hurston, the Department is committed to bringing the fruits of 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. We offer undergraduate majors in five areas: literature and culture; theater, music and the visual arts; history; Black Women's Studies; and inter-group relations. Our M.A. program is based on personalized programs of study shaped to meet the needs of individual students, many of whom participate in the "Bridge" programs which enable them to move directly into Ph.D. programs in English and History. Faculty members and students are active in a broad range of activities, including hip-hop programs for at-risk youth, community theater, college classes for low-income adults, and various support activities for the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, Alabama. We pride ourselves on positive working relationships with our colleagues in traditional disciplines as well as the Women’s Studies Program and the Department of African Literature & Languages. A vibrant community of scholars and students who believe in the ideal of unity without uniformity, we welcome all those committed to the deeper understanding of race in America and the world.
 

African American History Position

The Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison invites applications for a tenure track Assistant Professor appointment in African-American history, subfield open. This appointment will begin August 24, 2009. Candidates must have the Ph.D. in hand by date of hire. Research and teaching interests may include, but are not limited to, diaspora history, gender and women’s history, popular culture, slavery, and black political and social movements. The successful candidate is expected to teach the survey course in African American history, contribute to both the graduate and undergraduate programs in the department, produce scholarship commensurate with the expectations of a research university, and perform University service as appropriate. Send a cover letter describing research, teaching experience and teaching philosophy, curriculum vitae, official graduate transcript, three letters of recommendation, and a writing sample to Professor Craig Werner, Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 4141 Helen C. White Hall, 600 N. Park St. Madison, WI, 53706. The deadline for completed applications is November 28, 2008. UW-Madison is an EOE. We promote excellence through diversity and encourage all qualified individuals to apply. Unless confidentiality is requested in writing, information regarding the names of applicants must be released upon request. Finalists cannot be guaranteed confidentiality. Employment may require a criminal background check.

Announcements

Sagashus Levingston received a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship to study Porgugese this summer.  The Fellowship covers tuition and provides a $2,500 stipend.

Robin Brooks, one of our former M.A. students received the McKnight Fellowship---funding for five years and will be attending University of Florida.

Tessa Lowinske Desmond (MA ‘05) has received theThe K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award, which recognizes graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education; who demonstrate a commitment to developing academic and civic responsibility in themselves and others; and whose work reflects a strong emphasis on teaching and learning.
The awards are sponsored by K. Patricia Cross, David Gardner Professor of Higher Education, Emerita, at the University of California, Berkeley.  From 1996 through 2005, the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Awards were administered by the American Association for Higher Education, where Professor Cross had served as Chair of AAHE’s Board of Directors.

The Association of American Colleges and Universities became the partner association in 2006 and is pleased to continue the tradition of this prestigious award.

Two of our Masters students in the Department of Afro-American Studies, Jim Hollar and Sagashus Levingston, have recently been awarded HEX Grants from The Center for the Humanities. HEX, or the Humanities Exposed program, is a public scholarship initiative that awards funding to graduate students for starting community programs. Each grant recipient, or HEX Scholar, designs a project that brings their research into a public context and addresses a community need in Madison, linking the campus and community in creative and original ways.
Jim and Sagashus were awarded a $2000 HEX Grant for their joint project proposal, "Slavery and the Making of the Matrix," which aims to provide a space to engage struggling students, particularly three groups of African-American males, with culturally relevant instruction. By teaching the history of slavery in a new way, with parallels to contemporary society, Jim and Sagashus hope to foster social consciousness and awareness of systems of social control. Additionally, they hope to prepare these students for existing academic programming in Madison such as the Odyssey Project, the Omega School, and Federal TRIO programs.
The Humanities Exposed (HEX) program is in its fifth year and has been funded by the Evjue Foundation and the UW Graduate School. HEX strives to bring a more public orientation to research in the humanities, and to create a cadre of public scholars in the UW-Madison Graduate School who are unafraid to work in and with communities. Further, HEX hopes to foster sustainable university-community partnerships that last beyond the tenure of the graduate students in our program. As you may already know, we've had a HEX Scholar from the Department of Afro-American Studies in the past, Crystal Moten, whose project remains ongoing, in the form of classroom materials utilized by the Madison East High School history faculty. I would like to extend my congratulations to our two new HEX Scholars from Afro-American Studies—Jim and Sagashus—for their commitment to addressing community needs in Madison by sharing their knowledge and talents.
David Green has been awarded the 2008 Phil Zwickler Memorial Research grant by Cornell University for his current research project on the National Association of Black and White Men Together; tentatively titled Queering Civil Rights, Coloring Stonewall: A History of Quare Interracial Activism, 1980-1990 this project aims to place gay men and lesbian women of color as political activist in the otherwise white-centered Gay liberation movement. Cornell University awards a select number of scholars whose research make critical contributions to human sexuality studies. David is a second year graduate student in the department. His research interests in African American gay and lesbian social and cultural histories are critical and instructive: Black gay men and lesbian women must be recognized for their intellectual and political activism in both the Civil Rights and Gay and Lesbian movements.

David is also a 2008 Audre Lorde Award recipient. Audre Lorde Scholarship Awards are designed to recognize out lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender students of color who are making significant contributions to LGBT communities. David’s award winning poem “Silent Soliloquy” speaks to the injustices that out black gay men face in social and academic communities and, in the words of Audre Lorde, suggests that “silence will not protect you.”
Two former Afro-American Studies students, Andrew Witt (B.A. 1996) and Simon Wendt (M.A. 2000), have published their first academic books. Dr. Witt, currently on the faculty of Edgewood College, is the author of The Black Panthers in the Midwest (Routledge, 2007). Professor Wendt, who teaches American History at the University of Heidelberg is the author of The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights. (University Press of Florida, 2007). Congratulations!
The Afro-American Studies Department would like to extend its warmest congratulations to Professor Franklin D. Wilson, who this May was granted emeritus status in recognition for his contributions to the university. Prof. Wilson is now the William H. Sewell-Bascom Professor of Sociology.
Former Afro-American Studies teaching assistant William Sturkey has been awarded the Glover Moore Prize by the Mississippi Historical Society. His major UW-Madison research project, "Houses of Liberty: The Impact of Freedom Schools During SNCC's 1964 Freedom Summer," was judged the finest M.A.thesis on Mississippi history or biography completed during the academic year 2006-2007. Currently, William is a doctoral student in History at The Ohio State University.
The department is proud to congratulate international studies and political science major Jeffrey Wright, a rising senior at UW. He is a recipient of the 2006-2007 University Book Store Academic Excellence Award for the completion of an outstanding independent research study. Titled "Black Art in the Twenty-First Century: Hip-Hop and the Quest for a Black Aesthetic," his research project focuses on today's hip-hop generation and hip-hop music in particular as an expressive medium through which practitioners dictate a new black consciousness. The project originated in Prof. Sandra Adell's 603 course on the Harlem Renaissance, and Prof. Adell served as the project advisor.
Poetry Reading by Ed Pavlic on Tuesday, Novemver 11, at 4:30 p.m. in 7191 Helen C. White. Ed Pavlic is professor of English and director of the MFA/PhD program in creative writing at the University of Georgia. His previous books of poems are Labors Lost Left Unfinished and Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue, which was selected by Adrienne Rich for the American Poetry Review / Honickman First Book Prize. He has also published a scholarly work, Crossroads Modernism, on African American literary culture. Reading is sponsored by the Department of Afro-American Studies, The Department of English and the Integrated Liberal Studies program
 
We wish to congratulate recent program graduate Charles Hughes, who was featured in April 22's online Seattle Times article, "Diary of the EMP pop conference."