Emphasis on social, political, and economic change in 20th century Africa; with further emphasis upon the roles of modernization, urbanization, and the emergence of contemporary African states.

The Department of African & African American Studies (AAAS) is Duke s center for interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship on Africa and people of African descent around the world, in particular the Black Atlantic. Duke hosts anthropologists, humanists, political scientists, historians, sociologists, geneticists, scholars of the performing arts and literature whose work engages questions of race, class, gender, sexuality, politics and the law to study the conditions and experiences of Africans and communities of the African diaspora.