Program Description

The Global African Studies Program (GASP) of which the Minor in Global African Studies is a part, is necessitated by the imperatives of a solid liberal education, properly conceived. Those imperatives require us as educators to strive to create graduates who are imbued with an expansive sense of the human experience and, simultaneously, trained to identify unifying themes in this experience throughout history. Additionally, we share with John Henrik Clarke the belief that “there is now a need for a global approach to Africana Studies, one that embraces the Africans in Africa, in North and South America, and in the Caribbean Islands who are just discovering that they are African people. Because history is both topical and ancient, and cannot be separated, there is no way to talk about Africana Studies without looking again at the roots of world history and the interplay among the histories of various peoples.” In light of the preceding imperatives the Minor in Global African Studies is designed to educate Seattle University students about the African World, globally conceived. On one hand, it takes the African American experience as the anchor. On the other, it enables students to acquire knowledge of the African World outside the United States, including the rest of the “New World” from Canada to Chile and all points in-between, as well as Africa, and wherever else in the world the African presence is to be found.

Program Objectives

1) To educate Seattle University students, primarily, and whoever else shall come to it, about all aspects of the global African experience in ways that take account of:

• the specific experiences of Americans of African descent in the United States
• the experiences of peoples of African descent in the Americas
• the global distribution of African peoples and the diverse cultural forms that have resulted from this distribution iv) the experiences of African peoples in the African continent

2) To provide a forum for the production and dissemination of knowledge about global Africa to all levels of American society

3) Organize such activities as may contribute to the attainment of (1) and (2).