Building Black Futures Through
Black Study
Discover the rich history, culture, and intellectual contributions of the Black community.
Exploring Black Radical Traditions:
Empowering Black Feminist, Queer,
and Transgender Perspectives
Through trans/anti-disciplinary, futurist, and abolitionist programming, community partnerships, and curriculum, Black Study
Stresses Black ways of knowing and being in this and other imagined worlds as they articulate with the following thematic axes:
1) Black Radical Traditions with an emphasis on Black Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies and Perspectives;
2) Black inventions, interventions, futurities, and abolition;
3) Africa and its Black Diasporas.
Critically addresses and seeks to overcome all forms of antiblackness while imagining and prefiguring an altogether new world. Black Study is deeply engaged in the long duration of Black people’s ways of being and theories of knowing — Black epistemologies — in the African continent and its diasporas: Blackness beyond the veil of antiblackness, Blackness as being and becoming. At the same time, introducing invention and improvisation into existence, Black Study is future-oriented, and as such, informed by collective past experiences, and continuing spiritualities, explores becoming and alternative genres of the Human and the Social.
The Department of Black Study emphasizes the verb “study” and stresses the engaged and embodied practice of teaching and research that is simultaneously diasporic, local, communal, planetary, historical, contemporary, and future-oriented. It is therefore, necessarily transdisciplinary in scope, straddling various disciplines in the Social Sciences, Humanities, STEM, and the Arts. Black Study trans-disciplinarity is anchored in an intersectional lens, maintaining both symmetry and dissonance to seriously engage Black epistemologies, Black metaphysics, Black temporality, and Black social, cultural, and spiritual life.
The B.A. degree consists of 56 units with requirements focused on the major social factors and movements impacting Black peoples in the African continent and its diasporas, as well as courses along the following themes:
- Critical Study in Black Lives;
- Arts, Cultures, and Imagination;
- Behavioral Sciences, Social Sciences, and Pasts;
- Building Black Liberation.
Major Requirements
The requirements for a B.A. degree in Black Study are as follows:
1) Lower-division requirements (16 units)
- BLKS 001 – Introduction to Black Study I: Black People Domestically and Globally Now
- BLKS 002 – Introduction to Black Study II: Imagined and Embodied
- BLKS 003 – Introduction to BLKS Study III: Black Ways of Knowing, Doing, and (B)eing Otherwise
- BLKS 004 – Introduction to Black Study IV: Praxis, Innovation, and Imagination
2) Upper-division requirements (40 units)
- BLKS 191A or 191B – Black Study Transdisciplinary Research Methods: Gateways to Inquiry
- BLKS 192A AND 192B: Senior Capstone
- BLKS 193 – Black Study Inland Empire Community Initiative
- Twelve (12) units. Students must take at least three (3) courses from two of the streams below.
Minor Requirements
The requirements for a minor in Black Study (36 credits) are as follows:
1) Lower-division requirements (16 units)
- BLKS 001 – Introduction to Black Study I: Black People Domestically and Globally Now
- BLKS 002 – Introduction to Black Study II: Imagined and Embodied
- BLKS 003 – Introduction to BLKS Study III: Black Ways of Knowing, Doing, and (B)eing Otherwise
- BLKS 004 – Introduction to Black Study IV: Praxis, Innovation, and Imagination
2) Upper-division requirements (20 units)
- BLKS 191A or 191B – Black Study Transdisciplinary Research Methods: Gateways to Inquiry
- BLKS 193 – Black Study Inland Empire Community Initiative
- Twelve (12) units. Students must take at least three (3) courses from two of the streams below.
Stream One
Critical Study in Black Lives.
- BLKS 019 / RLST 019: Black Religion in the United States
- BLKS 101: Critical Theories of Gender, Race, and Blackness
- BLKS 111: Troublesome Possibilities: Reality, Black Aliveness, and Becoming
- BLKS 114: Black Healing Traditions
- BLKS 115 / RLST 115: Black Religion, Resistance, and Moral Imagination
- BLKS 118: Black Political Thought
- BLKS 142: Blackness and Carcerality
- BLKS 145: Black Language in Schools and Society
Stream Two
Arts, Cultures, and Imagination.
- BLKS 024: Black Social Dance & Movement(s) 1
- BLKS 114: Black Healing Traditions
- BLKS 120: Black Feminism and the Sacred
- BLKS 121: The Body & Flesh in Black Thought
- BLKS 122: House Dance and Futurist Cypher Technologies
- BLKS 123/ SFSC 123: Reclaiming the Dark: Black Life is Speculative Fiction
- BLKS 124: Black Social Dance & Movement(s)
Stream Three
Behavioral Sciences, Social Sciences, and Pasts.
- BLKS 118: Black Political Thought
- BLKS 131: Blackness in the Social Sciences
- BLKS 132: Black Diaspora(s)
- BLKS 135: Incarcerated Black Radicalisms
- BLKS 142: Blackness and Carcerality
Stream Four
Building Black Liberation.
- BLKS 024: Black Social Dance & Movement(s) 1
- BLKS 120: Black Feminism and the Sacred
- BLKS 124: Black Social Dance & Movement(s) 2
- BLKS 135: Incarcerated Black Radicalisms
- BLKS 144 Artist Healers: Trans Indigenous Medicine and Art Intersection