The African American Studies department at The College of New Jersey promotes scholarship and dialogue on issues related to Africa and its Diaspora.
African American Studies explores the full spectrum of promise and tragedy throughout Africa and its Diaspora. It questions matters of race and ethnicity that reside at the heart of America’s national identity and comprise the nation’s most persistent problems. African American Studies provides a balanced examination of the internal dynamics of power relations in the United States and its relationship with the rest of the world.
African American Studies gives the liberal education contextual foundation and enhances mainstream studies by looking at the cultural, structural, historical, and intellectual substructure of the West.
The Department of African American Studies comprises an interdisciplinary faculty whose research interests and scholarship provide a unique and comprehensive approach to understanding society. The department emphasizes writing skills, the ability to converse forcefully and intelligibly in any setting, critical and independent thinking, and a facility to interrogate the silences in the arts, journalism, literature, law, politics, and history.
The African American Studies department addresses the questions of social justice, fairness, political process, and economic and cultural development that allow a thorough interrogation of the dominant culture and allow students to explore American hegemony and the existing racial/ethnic order as a contingency of history and not the natural ordering of society. The department believes that a healthy democracy necessitates an informed, curious, and active public willing to question its deficiencies.
Students who take African American Studies courses at TCNJ are invested in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic world and wish to continue the dialogue on managing differences. These students are attracted to the African American Studies department’s small classes, challenging classroom environment, broad scholarly training, and teaching methods, and use of the newest and most exciting instructional techniques, including integrating web resources, hypertextual media, and community engagement into traditional pedagogy.