50 Years of Africana Studies at Williams College, 1969-2019
Thu, April 4th, 2019 - Sun, April 7th, 2019
- This event has passed.
Africana Studies is an interdisciplinary field that emerged during the 1960s Freedom Movements and that expands our knowledge of the vast experiences of people of Africa and the African Diaspora. In 1969, student organizing at Williams helped usher in what was then Afro-American Studies. To consider fifty years of Africana Studies at Williams College is to acknowledge the ways that the formal study of people of African descent that was institutionalized in 1969 is tied to histories of student organizing and faculty strategic planning. It is also to consider the longer, deeper histories of Black Williams, where the ebb, flow, and “limbo time” of Black experience made plenty good room for what Africana Studies has since become.
The existence of Africana Studies at Williams College is recognition that, even in the rural hills of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, Black Lives have always and continue to matter. We invite you to join us as we commemorate our fifty-year presence at Williams. Events run April 4-7.
In collaboration with other campus partners including The Davis Center (which celebrates 30 years at Williams in 2018), Special Collections, the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, Alumni Relations, Communications, and the W. Ford Schumann ’50 Program in Democratic Studies.