Graduate Certificate in Africana Studies

The Department of Africana Studies at University of Tennessee, Knoxville is committed to producing and disseminating interdisciplinary knowledge about Africa, African Americans, and the African Diaspora around the world. It promotes creative and critical thinking skills through rigorous research, teaching, service, and publication on the cultures, arts, institutions, histories, political economies, and philosophies of African peoples and peoples of African descent worldwide. Africana Studies is a multicultural, interdisciplinary, and transnational intellectual paradigm that anchors its scholarship on local, national, regional, and global scales. It conceives of the Africana world as extending from Africa to North America, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Asia, and Europe. This department is rooted in the traditions, history, and agency of the African Americans who were instrumental in the emergence of Africana Studies in the United States. As a discipline, Africana Studies fulfills the changing needs of our society and the wider world. It also makes a serious effort toward implementing the objectives of the College of Arts and Sciences and the strategic plans of the University of Tennessee by preparing students for a global world. The central goal of this program is therefore to provide students with a comprehensive interdisciplinary education and critical level of knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the Africana experience in its multiple dimensions.

For admission to a graduate program, an international student must have an equivalent 4-year bachelor's degree with at least a 3.00 on a 4.00 scale on all previous coursework or a 3.30 on a 4.00 scale on all previous graduate work. Grading systems other than the 4.00 scale are evaluated, upon receipt of transcripts, in accordance with standard practice. Programs may require a higher average GPA for admission. Applicants with work experience or who are entering graduate study after a number of years away from an educational institution, usually five years, will be given consideration with greater flexibility relative to GPA.

Minimum score requirements for admission to the Graduate School are:
a total score of 80 on the internet-based TOEFL (iBT),
a total score of 550 or equivalent on the paper-based TOEFL (PBT), or
a 6.5 overall band score on the IELTS.