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 accomplished and can’t wait to see what you do next.
We are also thrilled to recognize this year’s department prize winners:
The Pickens Prize, awarded in memory of William Pickens ’04 for outstanding senior essays in African and African American Studies, was awarded to Prentiss Patrick-Carter for “a far away machine.”
The Sylvia Ardyn Boone Prize, awarded for the best written work by a Yale student on African or African American art, is jointly administered by the History of Art and African American Studies Departments. Established by Vera Wells ’71 in honor of Sylvia Ardyn Boone, a pioneering scholar of African and women’s art and the first African American woman granted tenure at Yale, celebrates Boone’s legacy. This year’s prize was awarded to Alex Fiahlo for the dissertation “Apertures onto AIDS: Black Queer Photography and the Art History of the Storage Unit.”