The Department of African American Studies (AAS) is housed in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Science. It is the only department of its kind in the nation to recognize the importance of environmental justice in its curriculum.

The field of African American and African studies, an important outgrowth of the Black freedom struggles of the 1960s and ‘70s, is shrinking. Many have become the victims of institutional racism with the conservative political tide that returned with a vengeance in the 1980s. Of the roughly 400 institutions with active Africana departments in the early 1970s, only 220 still offer undergraduate programs and 22 offer graduate degrees.

Founded as a program in 1971, AAS became a department in 1979. AAS offers a variety of opportunities for study, research, community involvement, and study abroad.

AAS offers a B.A. in African American Studies, and an M.A. in Pan African Studies (launched in 2005). Further practice, experience, and community linkages are provided through the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company, and the Community Folk Art Center.

The Gender and Environmental Justice project is co-chaired by two noted scholars and activists: Linda Carty, associate professor and former chair of AAS, and Kishi Animashaun Ducre, an assistant professor of AAS.

Linda Carty is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1989. A long-time scholar and activist, Dr. Carty has been involved in Black women’s labor struggles in Canada, the US and the Caribbean, and HIV/AIDS work in Black and Latino communities in the US and the Caribbean.

Dr. Animashaun Ducre received her Ph.D. in the Environmental Justice Program in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan. She is an Assistant Professor in the African American Studies Department at Syracuse University. Her research interests are environmental justice and spatial analysis. She has worked on environmental justice issues for over a decade.

To learn more about Syracuse University, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of African American Studies, please visit our Contact Us page.