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Africana Studies

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Magali Roy-Fequiere

Chair & Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies; Chair of Africana Studies

2 East South Street

Galesburg, IL 61401-4999

309-341-7712

mroy@​​knox.edu

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Ford Center for the Fine Arts

Major, Minor

How We Work

  1. We get to the bottom of things. Africana Studies brings together a wide range of topics in history, politics, and culture, but we care about more than just cursory discussions and treating the symptoms: we expose the very roots and structures of our society. 
  2. We go where no one else has gone. Knox has a long history of forging new paths in Africana Studies, and today you'll find courses that reflect the unique interests of our faculty: classes like African American psychology, African American philosophy, African dimensions of the Black experience in Latin America, and Black women in the civil rights movement.
  3. Our work is intersectional. Knox is a member of Association for Black Culture Centers (ABCC) and works with Latino, Asian American and Native American centers on the historical and contemporary connections that other groups have with African people. The ABCC Independent Speakers Bureau also allows us to more easily bring lecturers and presenters from all over.
  4. We carry our discipline into everything we do. Some of us study Africana Studies and go into academia, and some become attorneys, or financial analysts, or physicians. Whatever our professional aspirations may be, the ability to look critically at our environment serves us well in all our pursuits. Just ask our alumni!
  5. Our grads find success. Alfred Wooten '96 is a Post Doctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Presita May '97 is assistant public defender for Cook County, Illinois. Christine Schuch is executive director of the NYC Community Learning Schools Initiative at United Federation of Teachers. Nuhaab Abbas '92 is manager of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment & Climate Change. LaShonda Johnson Scott '93 ia a physician at Rush Oak Park Hospital.

$53,922

Estimated Salary of Alumni with Africana Studies Degrees

Resources

Africana Studies occupies a spacious suite of offices, classrooms, seminar rooms, library and reception areas. The program benefits from the extensive holdings of Seymour Library, with more than a quarter of a million books, more than 700 periodicals, rare book collections and on-line databases. The abolitionist section in the archives is a valuable and unique resource.

In addition, the ABLE Center for Black Culture, operated by the student group, Allied Blacks for Liberty and Equality, maintains a cultural center with an extensive library of print and video materials, cultural artifacts relating to the African and African- American experiences, and meeting rooms for special events and study sessions.

Knox College's holdings of Africana Studies materials and excellent inter-library loan program provide ready access to research resources. Since Africana Studies research has been widespread for less than a half century, the resources you discover -- and the conclusions you draw -- may be previously unexamined and provide a source of help for future studies in the field.

On-Campus Programs

Knox has hosted many noteworthy black authors, speakers and performing groups, including U.S. Congressman John Lewis, Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka, poets Rita Dove and Gwendolyn Brooks, blues artists Koko Taylor and Joe Jackson, the Najwa Dance Company, Haki Madhubuti, Martin Luther King, III, Itabari Njeri, KRS-1, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. Scholars who have visited the campus include Delores Aldridge, Maulana Karenga, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall.

There are a number of co-curricular opportunities geared for students interested in Africana Studies. These include:

  • ABLE (Allied Blacks for Liberty and Equality), formed in 1967, and open to students of all races, unites students around common concerns regarding the Black experience.
  • RAMSU (Real African Men Standing Up), addresses the concerns of African American men on the Knox campus and in the larger society.
  • Harambee Club aims at clarifying the false stereotypes about Africa by promoting African history and culture through various activities.

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https://www.knox.edu/academics/majors-and-minors/africana-studies

Printed on Thursday, March 28, 2024