Life as an AAAS Concentrator
Students become African and African American Studies concentrators for many different academic and personal reasons. Because the Department realizes this, there is a strong commitment to helping students develop programs around the requirements of the concentration, which allows them to pursue the questions that most engage them. The Department offers seminars on a wide variety of subject matter in the field, as well as a core of lecture courses that provide surveys of African and African American history and literature. In addition, the Department also encourages students in the concentration to take relevant courses in other fields such as English and American Literature and Language, Economics, Government, History, History and Literature, History of Science, Psychology, Romance Languages and Literatures, Sociology, the Study of Religions, and Women's Studies. The Department of African and African American Studies is always interested in supporting the work of joint concentrators with their studies in these other fields.
Students with African and American Studies concentrations go on to pursue graduate study in such fields as English, History, Politics, and Sociology; and they also go on to work in a wide variety of careers in business, law, and the arts and sciences.
The key to understanding the concentration lies in grasping how the Department expects students to make their way through the enormous variety of possibilities for a concentrator or joint concentrator in African and African American Studies at Harvard. While there are some required courses, the essence of the program is in the pattern of chosen electives. Except for AAAS 10 and AAAS 11, there are no other courses that the Department recommends students take in their first year. There are, however, introductory courses on African and African American literature and history that students might consider.
Since the African and African American Studies program is interdisciplinary, students may find themselves taking courses from a variety of departments for the concentration. While this opens up a myriad of possibilities, the department requests concentrators to make their course selections with a specific focus in mind. Defining a focus enables concentrators to develop a coherent plan of study and provides them with the necessary course preparation to write their senior theses. In fact, the writing of a short Concentration Focus Statement is a required part of the admission process to the concentration. Students should consult the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) before formulating their statement of concentration focus.
The Concentration Focus Statement is a guide for you and the DUS in planning your courses in African and African American Studies. It should specify an intellectual focus, which might be defined by a social problem, such as urban poverty or racial discrimination; or by a discipline, such as literary studies, sociology, or political science; or by a theme, such as the city or representations of Africans and African Americans in literature, music, painting, and film. (The latter thematic focus might involve taking courses not only in African and African American Studies but also in English, Music, Art History, and Visual and Environmental Studies).
Often mentioning courses that you have taken or intend to take which fit with this focus will be a good idea. If you have a sense of a project that you aim to make the subject of your Senior Thesis, you might want to mention it and how it fits into your focus; and you might also want to identify courses that you think you will need to take in order to have the intellectual tools for that job. (Thus, for example, if your thesis will involve statistical analysis, then a course in statistics might be an important element of your program; if your work is in literature, you might want to take a course in literary theory that addresses no African American texts).
It is possible to become a concentrator as late as the junior year if students have already taken courses relevant to their focus because of the way the concentration works. On the whole, however, the department prefers students to become African and African American Studies concentrators during their sophomore year.
One of the central features of the African and African American Studies concentration is the requirement that concentrators work individually with a professor on a project of their choice (relevant to their focus) before writing the Senior Thesis. This takes place in AAAS 98/98a: Junior Tutorial. Students should contact professors with whom they wish to work (they need not be faculty in the AAAS Department) as early as possible, ideally during the prior semester. Faculty members are able to teach only a restricted number of such tutorials each term and the slots fill up quickly.
Undergraduates who are considering a concentration in African and African American Studies are encouraged to contact the DUS (617-496-8546, tshelby at fas.harvard.edu) or The Undergraduate and Graduate Program Officer (617-384-7767, cloutier at fas.harvard.edu). Members of the African and African American Studies Faculty are always happy to speak with students considering the concentration.