Africana Studies Department prepares to hire faculty, create classes

Over the summer, the University’s Board of Trustees approved the establishment of the Department of Africana Studies, allowing the department to hire new faculty members.

The newly-minted department is currently working on putting together an action plan for new hires, though they have been able to “hire” one faculty member, honorary emeritus professor W.E.B. Du Bois.

“We’ll be thinking about the areas where we’re already strong and maybe one hire would make us the place to come and study that thing, as well as what are the areas where we’ve had these long-standing deficiencies,” Director of the Center of Africana Studies and inaugural Chair of the Department Camille Charles said. “We think that we have the capacity to become one of the places, if not the place, to come to do Africana studies.”

Penn has had a Center for Africana Studies since 2002, but until now, courses in the Africana Studies Department were taught by professors from other departments.

For example, Charles herself was hired by the sociology department and was then allowed to cross-list her courses under Africana studies.

According to Charles, the center only had affiliated faculty, so it was difficult to have well-attended meetings and committees.

“No matter how important the center is to us as an intellectual space, to be blunt, it’s not paying our bills,” Charles said. “Our bills get paid out of our responsibilities in our [primary] departments where we’re evaluated for tenure and promotion.”

In addition to not being able to hire faculty, not having an official department also meant that tuition dollars never went to the center.

“Even though ‘Introduction to Africana Studies’ was a course that the center owned, there were no tuition dollars that came out of that because the faculty were always teaching it from other departments,” Charles explained.

According to Charles, the process for becoming a department really picked up two years ago when the minority equity report came out.

“One of the things we noticed was that all of the places that were outperforming us­ — particularly in terms of black faculty but also, I think, largely in terms of Latino faculty — had departments, whether they were ethnic studies departments or black studies departments or Latino studies departments,” she said. “They had the capacity to hire faculty in fields that you’re more likely to find black or Latino faculty in.”

After receiving support from the president, provost and dean, Charles was able to fast track the process of creating the department.

While students had already been able to pursue a major or minor in Africana studies, establishing an official department reflects a change in the University’s attitude towards the subject.

“For graduate and undergraduate students, having departmental status signals a level of respect, legitimacy and permanence,” Charles said.

College senior Marcel Salas is thrilled that the University has established an Africana Studies Department.

“I think that making it a department is a political statement on the part of the administration to recognize a field that’s stigmatized as not being a legitimate discipline,” Salas said.

“It’s also addressing this idea that Africana studies isn’t a safe major,” she added.

Azani Pinkney, a junior who is currently transferring from Engineering into the College in order to study Africana studies, agrees with Salas.

“My dad used to always tell me, ‘If you don’t know who you are, you don’t know what you should be doing,’” Pinkney said. “If you don’t understand the history and traditions of your people, you won’t know how to continue their journey and legacy in the proper way. This is why Africana studies is important to me. It is an academic space for personal and communal growth.”

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.