Department of Africana Studies
Master of Arts in Africana Studies
Graduate Program Director: Anthony Hurley, Melville Social & Behavioral Sciences Bldg., S-235 (631) 632-1366
Assistant-to-the-Chair: Phyllis Zenker, Ward Melville Social & Behavioral Sciences Bldg., S-249 (631) 632-7470
Degree Awarded: M.A. in Africana Studies
______________________________________________________________The Department of Africana Studies, in the College of Arts and Sciences, offers a course of studies leading to the degree of Master of Arts in Africana Studies. The purpose of the M.A. in Africana Studies is threefold: to meet the need for academic inquiry at the graduate level into the history, experiences, and perspectives of peoples of African heritage worldwide; to broaden the scope of academic offerings at the graduate level within the SUNY system and at Stony Brook University specifically; to enhance professional development in careers in a range of professions where knowledge of the Black experience is increasingly useful , such as law, management, medicine, public health, public service, social welfare, museum curator studies, cinema studies, and education.
The M.A. degree requires a total of 30 graduate course credits with an overall minimum GPA of 3.0. Eighteen (18) of these credits will be in the Africana Studies Graduate Core Curriculum. Twelve (12) credits may be part of an elective mix of AFS graduate courses and graduate courses taken outside the Africana Studies Department. The twelve credits include a research thesis project (6 credits); tutorials; or study abroad. The foundation courses are required of all students pursuing an M.A. degree in Africana Studies. The two semester sequence will introduce students to the theoretical and methodological issues of the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean/Latin America. A required research seminar introduces students to the historiography of the African Diaspora.
Students will be afforded an opportunity to earn six (6) credits in a study abroad program conducted in African and/or the Caribbean-Latin America. The graduate study abroad option would include a research course and a lecture topics course. Stony Brook's International Academic Programs Office (IAP) has committed to travel-study programs in the Caribbean and in Africa both in the summer months and during the university's winter session in efforts to widen the range of approaches to international understanding. A small number of the courses offered by the M.A. Program in Africana Studies could also be taken by students in the M.A.T. Program in Social Studies Education to fulfill the requirements of that program.
