Bachelor of Arts in Black Studies

University of California - Santa Barbara

The first Black Studies Department in the University of California system, UCSB Black Studies was founded in 1969 in response to student protests. Student activists envisioned Black Studies as ''an important expression of the hopes and creative expression of Black people'' and the keystone of a larger Black Freedom movement, declaring ''Black studies represents an individual and community need, the one inseparable from the other.'' UCSB Black Studies centers social justice as well as intellectual rigor in our courses. As a student in the program, you’ll learn from faculty in multiple disciplines including History, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Political Science, Performance Studies, and Comparative Literature. We demand intersectional justice by examining how gender, sexuality, class, religion, nationality, and disability shape Black lives globally. The department brings together scholars studying Black lives in the United States, the Caribbean, South America, and Europe as well as on the African continent, fostering a transnational understanding of race, place, gender, and freedom.

College of Letters and Science