Black Studies Department

The Department of Black Studies at CSU, Channel Islands (CSUCI), is an intellectual community and academic unit committed to producing and advancing the knowledge of Black people from culturally relevant, Diasporic, and transnational perspectives. The faculty in Black Studies are drawn from diverse academic disciplines and push the boundaries of knowledge through excellence in interdisciplinary scholarship and student-centered pedagogy.

In line with the CSUCI’s mission and institutional learning outcomes, the Department of Black Studies offers a student-centered, interdisciplinary educational experience that facilitates holistic development through intersectional, Diasporic, and transnational approaches; emphasizes experiential and community-engaged learning; and graduates students with an understanding of self and key historical, economic, political, and social dynamics in relation to contemporary theories of Blackness. The Black Studies Department graduates students with methodological, intellectual, emotional, and conceptual tools to be change agents and intervene in the highly complex and integrated contemporary dynamics of anti-Blackness.

As an interdisciplinary academic unit, the intellectual framework of Black Studies investigates the subject area from the perspective of African-descended peoples’ aesthetic dimensions, cultural experiences, and envisioned destinies. The Black Studies program broadly engages questions about the distribution of power, historical inquiries that help us understand how such arrangements form over time, and practical applications that can work toward dismantling structures of inequality. Furthermore, the program seeks to advance the liberatory knowledge of the African-descended peoples in ways that transform conditions in urban Black communities and global settings.

To this end, the program is committed to providing students with a learning environment that critically examines the Black experience utilizing foundational approaches for critical thinking and sociocultural analysis. Students will develop strong classroom communication, research, and writing skills and learn to apply those skills in any career field. With opportunities for students to develop as scholars and engaged community members, the program of Black Studies at CSUCI offers options for students to pursue either a major or a minor. Additionally, students are encouraged to work with program faculty and seek internships.

Equitably addressing contemporary global and local challenges, such as climate change, environmental destruction, racism, poverty, and restructuring caused by technological advances, requires understanding and challenging the dynamics of white supremacy. The critical and systemic study of the histories, cultures, and thought of African-descended peoples provides the conceptual tools to identify and intervene in persistent injustices. Given contemporary attacks on Black Studies curricula and the broader context of political backlash to Black people’s liberation movements, the Black Studies Department offers immediately necessary forms of community and intellectual engagement that foster Black students’ power, self-knowledge, confidence, and imagination.

Faculty

Kat Cosby, PhD
Assistant Professor
Madera Hall, Room 1405
katherine.cosby@csuci.edu

Cameron Harris, MFA
Associate Professor
Madera Hall, Room 1363
cameron.harris@csuci.edu

Nicole Vines, PhD
Assistant Professor
Madera Hall, Room 1620
eva.vines@csuci.edu

Programs

Major(s)

Black Studies, B.A.

Minor(s)