Fifty-five years after its founding, the African American Studies Department at Yale University has been renamed to the Black Studies Department, according to an article from Yale Daily News.
The update was made to reflect the growing number of new professors who study the African diaspora beyond the United States. According to its website, “the Black Studies Department examines, from numerous disciplinary perspectives, the experiences of people of African descent in Black Atlantic societies, including the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America.”
Yale established its African American studies program in 1969, making it the first undergraduate degree-granting program of its kind in the Ivy League. The program expanded over the next few decades, creating a master’s degree in 1978 and a Ph.D in 1994. On July 1, 2000, Yale officially launched the interdisciplinary African American studies department with its own dedicated faculty.
