Faculty
Faculty
Name | Contact | Specialty |
---|---|---|
Rose Brewer Professor |
839 Social Sciences 612-624-9305 [email protected] |
Social and behavioral sciences, public policy and development, African diasporic studies |
Njeri Githire Associate Professor |
848 Social Sciences 612-625-1687 [email protected] |
African artistic and cultural production, African diasporic studies |
Rahsaan Mahadeo Assistant Professor |
852 Social Sciences 612-624-9847 [email protected] |
Critical race and ethnic studies, Black studies, time, abolition, radical social and political thought, youth, the life course perspective, urban sociology |
Tade Okediji Professor |
868 Social Sciences 612-624-8957 [email protected] |
Social and behavioral sciences, public policy and development, Africa and African diasporic studies |
Yuichiro Onishi Associate Professor |
874 Social Sciences 612-625-0513 [email protected] |
African American history, Asian American studies, African diaspora studies |
Olivia Polk Assistant Professor |
Starting Fall 2025 | Black feminist theory, queer theory, 19th and 20th century African American literature, Black visual culture, gender and sexuality studies |
Ana Cláudia São Bernardo Assistant Professor |
825 Social Sciences 612-624-9847 [email protected] |
Black diaspora studies, Afro-Brazilian studies, gender, women and sexuality studies, global studies, Black diasporic literatures and cultures, Black geography |
Bula Sirika Wayessa
Assistant Professor |
872 Social Sciences
612-624-5083
[email protected] |
African archeology, social marginalization, the materiality of social identity, mobility, ontology, and agricultural change |
Josef Woldense Assistant Professor |
878 Social Sciences 612-624-0362 [email protected] |
Elite politics; authoritarian regimes, African political institutions and social network analysis |
Instructors
Name | Contact | Specialty |
---|---|---|
Khadar Jama Head Somali Language Instructor |
823 Social Sciences 612-624-8571 [email protected] |
African languages (Somali) |
Hassan Hade Teaching Specialist |
852 Social Sciences 612-624-8571 [email protected] |
African languages (Somali) |
Angaluki Muaka Senior Teaching Specialist |
856 Social Sciences 612-625-0185 [email protected] |
African Languages (Swahili), African diasporic studies |
Yolanda Williams Lecturer |
836 Social Sciences 612-624-0122 [email protected] |
African American literature, art, and history |
Affiliate Faculty
Affiliate faculty have homes in other departments, but hold appointments in our African American & African Studies department.
Name | Contact | Specialty |
---|---|---|
Cawo Abdi Associate Professor |
1033 Social Sciences Building [email protected] |
Migration, gender, race, and class, family, Islam, education, development studies, human rights, globalization, Africa, Middle East |
Adam Bledsoe Associate Professor |
414 Social Sciences 612-625-6080 [email protected] |
Black geographies, African diaspora, political geography |
Chotsani Elaine Dean Assistant Professor |
E277 Regis Center
612-625-8096 |
Art, ceramics, sculpture |
Megan Finch Assistant Professor |
310B Pillsbury Hall
[email protected] |
20th and 21st-century American literature, 20th and 21st-century African American literature, Black feminist theory |
Ramon Fonkoué Associate Professor |
305A Folwell Hall 612-624-7334 [email protected] |
African literature and cinema, French Caribbean literature; postcolonial critique, visual and film studies, race studies |
Karen Ho Professor |
395 Hubert H. Humphrey Center 612-626-1313 395 [email protected] |
Ethnography, feminist studies, political economy, US, cultural studies of finance capital, finance, globalization, and capitalism; and comparative race and ethnicity |
Fayola Jacobs Assistant Professor |
295D Humphrey School [email protected] |
Environmental planning, climate change, gender, race and ethnicity, urban and regional planning |
William Jones Professor |
1118 Heller Hall 612-625-6418 [email protected] |
Civil Rights Movement, African Americans, 20th-century US, unions/organized labor |
Douglas Kearney Professor |
310 Pillsbury Hall [email protected] |
Creative writing (poetry, nonfiction, libretto), Black aesthetics, poetics, and literature, experimental writing, writing for performance, popular/cultural criticism, hip hop studies, poetics and prosody |
Dwight K. Lewis, Jr. Assistant Professor |
817 Heller Hall 612-625-6563 [email protected] |
History of early modern philosophy, philosophy of human difference (e.g., race, gender, sexuality, power, decoloniality, etc), philosophy of race/Africana philosophy, social political philosophy, underrepresented philosophers |
Malinda Lindquist Associate Professor |
220 Johnston Hall [email protected] |
African-American history, US history, gender history and intellectual history |
Enid Logan Associate Professor |
956 Social Sciences Building [email protected] |
Race and electoral politics; Blackness in the US and Latin America, white liberalism and white conservatism, racial rhetoric, emotions and identities; The racialization of Indigeneity; Blacks and social class; race and the body |
Nathaniel Mills Associate Professor |
Pillsbury Hall 612-625-8444 [email protected] |
20th-century US and African American literature, literature and culture of the Great Depression, the literary left and communism in the US, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright |
Michael Minta Professor |
1337 Social Sciences 612-626-5632 [email protected] |
Congressional politics, race and ethnic politics, interest group advocacy |
Samuel L. Myers, Jr. Professor |
263 Humphrey School 612-625-9821 [email protected] |
Academic labor markets; evaluation of anti-racism programs; field experiments measuring racialized perceptions; government procurement and contracting; income inequality in China and the economics of disability in China and the United States; microeconomic policy analysis; modeling of disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE) and emerging small business enterprise (ESBE) programs; race-neutral remedies; racial disparities in drowning and competitive swimming and in academic performance; science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce |
August Nimtz Professor |
1327 Social Sciences 612-624-1512 [email protected] |
African politics, comparative politics, ethnic politics, Marxism, political development, politics of the transition to socialism, political economy |
Elliott H. Powell Associate Professor |
203 Scott Hall
72 Pleasant St SE |
American popular music and culture, comparative and relational race studies, feminist and queer studies, Afro-Asian studies, Black cultural studies, Afro-diasporic popular music, Inter-/cross-cultural music making, Sound studies |
Awa Saidy Associate Director, African Studies Initiative |
272 Social Sciences Building 612-626-9736 [email protected] |
Intercultural and cross-cultural leadership, higher education policy - access, quality, and relevance, institutional equity, program and policy evaluation, intersection of education, gender, and international development policy and practice. |
Christian Uwe Associate Professor |
146A Nicholson Hall 612-625-4445 [email protected] |
Sub-Saharan and Caribbean literature, African diaspora, 20th-21st century French literature, semiotics, postcolonial criticism, sexual minorities in African arts and politics |
Jamele Watkins Assistant Professor |
327C Folwell Hall 612-625-9350 [email protected] |
German literature and history, Black women writers, Black/African diaspora studies, performance studies, German film |
Faculty Emeriti
Name | Specialty |
---|---|
Keletso Atkins | Africa, African diasporic studies |
Victoria Coifman | Africa, African diasporic studies |
John Wright | African American literature, art, and history; Africa and African diasporic studies |