Welcome

Welcome to Black Studies at Yale. The Black Studies Department examines, from numerous disciplinary perspectives, the experiences of people of African descent in Black Atlantic societies, including the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

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From the Collection

  • The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., shown here with former Yale trustee the Rev. Gardiner M. Day, received an honorary LL.D degree at Yale’s 263rd commencement in 1964.

  • Ella Fitzgerald in 1940, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, who documented much of the Harlem Renaissance.Credit...Carl Van Vechten © Van Vechten Trust

  • Walter Evans Collection of Frederick Douglass and Douglass Family Papers

  • Half length group portrait, family group of six; father, mother, four children

News

June 14, 2026
Marlene Daut, Professor of French and of Black Studies, has been selected as a 2026–2027 fellow of the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for...
June 11, 2026
Marlene L. Daut, Professor of French and of Black Studies, has been awarded the 2026 James Tait Black Prize for her book The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall...
May 18, 2026
Celebrating the Class of 2026  The Department of Black Studies congratulates our graduating seniors and our newly minted Ph.D. students! We are so proud of all that you’ve...

 Whitfield Lovell, American, Ode 1999

Engage with Our Ideas

“Black Success, White Backlash” Elijah Anderson  The Atlantic

“The Black prison population increased during the heoight of COVID-19 pandemic, report finds”  Elizabeth Hinton The Grio.com

“Fear of a Black-Studies Planet There’s a reason Ron DeSantis feel threatened by African American Studies,” Roderick A. Ferguson The Chronicle of Higher Education

“In their place; the heavy burden of being Black in a white spac,” Elijah Anderson the guardian.com

“Black , Bold and Queer: Celebrating the Legacy of Marlon Riggs,” Thomas Allen Harris Documentary

“Style With Soul: How The World’s Most Iconic Black Women Singers Expressed Themselves Through Fashion,” Tavia Nyong’o Vogue

“White Supermacy as Daily Pratice,” Micah Jones, Historians’ Watch

“José Muñoz, Then and There: On the afterlives of the pioneering queer theorist,” Tavia Nyong’o, thebaffler.com

Bisa Butler Quilt Kindred