The M.A. in Pan African Studies is a 30-credit program offering students a comprehensive understanding of the global African experience. This interdisciplinary program is structured around:

• Four core courses
• Two electives
• An external site experience
• A thesis

For exact requirements about the M.A. In Pan African Studies, please consult the Course Catalog.

Apply through the Graduate School Applications website.

Deadline: January 10

Courses explore the Pan African experience as reflected in multiple historical, social, and political contexts, most notably in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. With the approval of the Graduate Committee, students may participate in the Scholar Exchange Program, a cooperative relationship with the University of Rochester and Cornell University.

This innovative program is distinct from any other of its kind. It has a unique experiential component that requires a residency at an external site abroad or at an affiliated institution. Students benefit from an alternative setting while applying their Pan African learning to the larger world.

Sites are located in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Canada and the United States. At the site, students complete a preapproved project involving research, practical education, independent study, an internship or a related activity. Two of the graduate courses that contribute to the core offerings in the program, AAS 611 Arts, Literatures, and Cultures of the Pan African World and AAS 612 Societies and Politics of the Pan African World, are unlike any courses offered in similar graduate programs around the country. The courses create a comprehensive framework that brings together concentrations from specific disciplinary foci, as well as the transformations in those foci that have occurred through the Black encounter.

Students learn to appreciate intellectual nuances, dynamism and diversification in this layered and complex field of academic engagement. Equally important, they are taught to engage the silences inherent in many disciplines and paradigms, including those associated with traditional African studies approaches. The M.A. in Pan African studies exposes students to the arts, the humanities and the social sciences, and incorporates a wider global framework against which the spectrum of the entire Black world is critically and comparatively examined and theorized.

The program aims to produce scholars ready either to proceed to further doctoral studies in the humanities or the social sciences, or to enter the world of work. Potential areas of employment include the local non-governmental sector, international organizations, social services, criminal justice, education and health care, among others.

For further information on our program please contact our Administrative Assistant, Ajajielle A. Brown, Room 204 Sims Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-1725. Phone: 315.443.5599.