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For Deon Bennett, Michigan State University’s new Black studies program is more than just a major.
“It felt like home,” the senior said of the new African and African American Studies (AAAS) degree program, which MSU launched in February.
The architects of the new program, all of whom are women, conceived of major as a way for students to evoke societal change. More than 40 scholars have already signed up.
AAAS Department Chair Ruth Brown said staff created the curriculum, which emphasizes gender and sexuality, through the mindset of societal change. She expects course offerings willchange as students and faculty provide feedback.
Brown said she expects the first full student cohort will graduate in 2025. Each student is required to take 36 credits in the department for eligibility of graduation.
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Associate Professor LeConté Dill said she hopes graduates will leave with a higher level of consciousness, not only surrounding the history of race, culture, gender and sexuality, but its contemporary and future possibilities.
She and Brown envision graduates will use their AAAS degree to push for societal action.
“I feel that students will be equipped to be in a wide array of careers, from the nonprofit sector to community organizing to government work to academia,” Dill said. “Many of our minors and majors are excited to even think about pursuing graduate degrees.”
The AAAS undergraduate program centers on three pillars of Blackness: feminism, genders and sexualities, Brown said. Course offerings include Black Girlhood Studies, Afrofuturism, Pedagogies of Protest and Creative Expression as Craft, according to the department’s website.
“We’re understanding Blackness as expansive, we’re understanding categories of identity as fluid and we are teaching, appreciating ourselves as faculty, and really as students, acting on behalf of a commitment to greater justice,” Brown said.
The first full cohort will graduate in 2025, she said.
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The AAAS major started as a specialization within MSU in 2000. In 2015, university leaders turned the program into a minor. Since then, 45 students have graduated with the minor, according to MSU spokesman Dan Olsen.
Bennett, also a board member on MSU’s Black Student Alliance, is set to graduate next month with a degree in communication but enrolled in several AAAS courses out of interest. In some of those classes, he’s noticed non-Black students are earnestly interested in the curriculum.
“It’s great to see allyship, and it’s great to see that people will want to get educated about different things such as Black feminism, Black Christianity, Black struggles, Black mental health and things of that nature,” Bennett said.
The bachelor’s degree program launched in February. Departmental Academic Specialist Yvonne Morris said it puts the Black experience at the forefront of education in a predominantly white institution.
“I’m hopeful that within a major, we can also, as we’re co-building with students, we can give them opportunities that doesn’t quite yet exist in other (departments),” she said.
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Contact reporter Krystal Nurse at (517) 267-1344or knurse@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @KrystalRNurse.
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