STUDY

The master’s program in Global African Studies is a two-year program and it has three specialization tracks. These are Museum and Critical Heritage Studies, Afro-Arab Relations, and Diplomacy and Africa’s International Relations.

Because all disciplines are moving toward interdisciplinary methodologies, our master’s curriculum engages major cross-cutting thematic fields, including intellectual thought, the Indian Ocean world, the Muslim world, gender studies and diaspora.

The Africa Institute’s postgraduate curriculum is designed to promote interdisciplinarity and interconnectedness, encouraging a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of global issues. The curriculum seeks to address the most vital and pressing questions related to Global Studies, spanning the full breadth and depth of the humanities and social sciences. It blurs traditional disciplinary boundaries, advancing interdisciplinary methodologies and thought processes by identifying key, intersecting thematic fields and areas of study. Moreover, with its emphasis on the research and teaching of non-Western languages and translation to its students and that of other universities in the country and the public at large, The Africa Institute provides its graduates with a vital understanding of local contexts, relevance, and deep-rooted connections.

Because the most urgent questions of the moment often necessitate trans- or interdisciplinary collaboration, we are assembling a faculty that has the requisite agility to work in, between, and across disciplines. In addition to our commitment to crossing disciplinary boundaries as a necessity of academic inquiry, the institute embraces new forms of graduate pedagogy, which assure that our students leave our program knowing: how to work collaboratively; how to write for and speak to a range of different audiences (not just academic); how to do effective and impactful public facing work; and how to work with big data and digital platforms. The Institute is also actively engaged in global conversations in the humanities and social sciences aimed at expanding the definition of the capstone doctoral project beyond the classic dissertation and at developing criteria for its evaluation and circulation.