Department of African & African American Studies

Members of Stanford’s Black Student Union participate in a student-led demonstration on campus in February 1969. Photographer: Stanford News Service

Welcome to the Department of African and African American Studies (DAAAS)

The DAAAS at Stanford University offers a robust curriculum for students, merging scholarship and scholars from across disciplines to examine the Black experience in the U.S, Africa, and the diaspora.

Welcome to the Department of African and African American Studies (DAAAS) - the first ethnic studies program developed at Stanford University and the first African and African American Studies program at a private institution in the U.S.

DAAAS students study Blackness through the lens of art, language, literature, politics, religion, dance, history, music, poetry, and comparative analyses. Black Studies was founded out of community demand, and so, our students also engage in community engaged learning opportunities to continue with this meaningful tradition. The AAAS Department offers three tracks for students in African American Studies, African Studies, and Global Black Diaspora Studies.

DAAAS promotes an understanding of how history informs the present and inspires an engagement with the past in order to collectively dream a more just and equitable future. Our faculty, staff, and students value the interrelated nature of the personal and the political and aim to create a community that allows for intellectual and personal flourishing.

Academics

AAAS Department Curriculum

AAAS Program Curriculum

AAAS Student Spotlights

‘We re-created the HBCU experience for ourselves’: Black Stanford alumni return to the Farm

Waves of Black alumni from several years returned “home” this past reunion weekend, which took place Thursday through Saturday and specifically highlighted the class years ending in four and nine.

Spotlight

Brittany Linus, Class of 2024

Majoring in AAAS has allowed me to critically engage with the question: "What is Black technology?" Through class discussions, community engagement projects, and academic research, I explored Black interactions with and contributions to the development of digital technology, ecosystems, and the fandoms that thrive because of them.