GREETINGS FROM THE CHAIR

More than thirty years ago, Harvard University embarked upon a bold experiment in higher education by founding a department in the nascent field called Afro-American Studies. Urged on by shifting coalitions of passionate students and sympathetic faculty committed to diversifying the curriculum and redressing a history of racial exclusion and imbalance, Harvard determined to take to a new and higher level its long demonstrated role in the education of African Americans. It was singularly appropriate that Harvard make a commitment to this field of learning. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the university had sent forth African American scholars who pioneered the study of the African American experience. Such intellectual giants as W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Alain Locke, and John Hope Franklin received their doctorates at Harvard all before the mid-twentieth century, and each would make a significant contribution to scholarship on the history, culture, and social institutions of persons of African descent. With the support of the university administrations between 1990 and 2006, the Department has been able to recruit recognized authorities in their respective fields, scholars known for the depth and range of their research as well as for their commitment to larger societal issues of diversity and injustice through public policy initiatives. Indeed, Harvard's Department of African and African American Studies has helped to lead a renaissance in the field through its renowned faculty and especially through the extraordinary leadership of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who chaired the Department from 1991 to 2006.

Today our department provides two tracks of study, a focus on Africa and a focus on African-descended peoples in the New World. Our faculty and course offerings bring together various disciplines, and our students of all intellectual complexions feel perfectly at home. In 2001, having attained the necessary strength and excellence to embark upon an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program, we admitted our first class of graduate students, surely an historic moment in the history of this university. Our Ph.D. Program, now marking its sixth year, is flourishing, offering an opportunity to pursue a rich variety of sub-specialties focused on Africa and the larger African diaspora. In the fall 2004, our Africa track was officially launched, thus broadening the concentration beyond its traditional African American identity. The Department has also augmented its faculty in African Studies, which now covers the disciplines of Anglophone literature, languages, religion, government, and economics. Through our African Language Program, the Department offers instruction in a number of languages found throughout the African continent. In June 2004 the Department awarded its first prize for excellence in African language and literature to a graduating senior.

Under new leadership African and African American Studies will continue to expand and to think in new interdisciplinary ways about peoples of African descent. We will also develop new initiatives of social responsibility that will connect our students and faculty in collaborative efforts with other schools in the University. This is an exciting time for reflecting upon our curriculum, for furthering our commitment to excellence and leadership, and for mining the considerable interdisciplinary depth of our field.

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham
Victor S. Thomas Professor of History
Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies