When Cynthia Young was hired as director of the Boston College Black Studies Program in 2005, she arrived to find a program that was struggling.
“When I got there, it was a program that had been kind of neglected for far too long,” Young said.
Young decided to do something about it. In January of 2006, the program, led by Young, announced a new title for a new era: African and African Diaspora Studies (AADS).
Making the Change
What is now known as the AADS program began in 1969–1970 as the Black Studies Program, reads the AADS website.
According to Rhonda Frederick, who served as the program’s fourth director from 2009 to 2014, the program was initially part of an academic initiative to recruit Black students to BC.
“In the beginning, Black Studies was invested in encouraging Black Bostonians, or students from Boston—Black students from Boston—to participate, to matriculate at BC, because the numbers were very small,” Frederick said.
The Black Studies Program was also part of a movement to broaden the intellectual and critical perspectives represented in the undergraduate curriculum, making BC one of the first major universities in the United States to institute Black Studies as integral to its academic curriculum, according to the program’s website.
The program also paved new paths at BC, according to Richard Paul, BC ’07 and current assistant director of the AADS program.
“Black Studies was the first ethnic studies program at Boston College,” Paul said.
The Black Studies minor was officially instituted in 1985 under the then director of Black Studies, Amanda V. Houston.
According to Martin Summers, who served as AADS director from 2014–2018 and 2021–2023, the program had an annual average of about a dozen students taking the minor in the mid-1990s.
But by the mid-2000s, the annual average was fewer than five.
According to Young, not only were minor numbers down, but programming was struggling, too.
It was time for a change.
With the support of BC faculty and administrators, including then MCAS Dean Joseph Quinn, Young began a reconstructive process that ultimately culminated in the renaming of the Black Studies Program to the African and African Diaspora Studies program in January 2006.
“It really just kind of reinvigorated all of the kind of areas of AADS that had been lacking prior to my coming,” Young said.
The renaming marked the beginning of the program’s new era.
“I think [the Black Studies Program] served its purpose, and it was one of the oldest Black studies programs in the country, but it didn’t really change much since it was established in the 60s,” Frederick said. “So professor Young brought it into the late 20th, early 21st century in really productive ways.”
A Fresh Focus
The changes weren’t limited to a new title, though. The renaming also impacted the curriculum, spurred growth in faculty, and refreshed a sense of focus.
“It’s not the same at all,” said C. Shawn McGuffey, a sociology professor who has worked at BC for about 20 years and served as program director from 2018–2021. “It’s a completely different program.”
The most obvious change—evident in the program’s new name—came in its emphasis on Africa and the African Diaspora.
“It was important to me to have the programs reflect current trends in the field,” Young said. “And the field was very much a field that was a diaspora studies kind of orientation.”
According to Young, this meant a greater focus on the relationship of Africa and African peoples as they dispersed across the diaspora and how this development impacted areas all around the globe, including the United States, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
“You really have to kind of look at it from a more holistic, kind of global perspective, when you’re thinking about Black experiences, Black cultures, Black histories,” Summers said.
In order to realize this new global perspective, Young aimed to increase the program’s faculty. In addition to hiring new professors, she worked to transition professors from different BC departments into joint appointments. The effect was substantial, and the program grew.
By the mid-2010s, AADS boasted roughly 30 minors each year, according to information from a 2018 self-study provided by Summers.
“I definitely think it sort of announced that the program was in a new place,” Young said. “And we definitely saw more minors. We saw a push for having a major, and we saw enrollments go up.”
Major Changes
The push for an AADS major proved to be a years-long process.
“Students were really always asking us about it,” Summers said. “‘Why is AADS only a minor? Why can’t we be a major?’”
Summers said he proposed a template for an AADS independent major, which a handful of students pursued.
Still, offering an official major remained the ultimate goal for the program. When McGuffey began his term as the program’s director in 2018, he drew from Summers’ work to develop a pilot program for a potential major.
According to McGuffey, in 2019, the program submitted its pilot proposal to the Educational Policy Committee.
“You have to make an argument about, you know, what the new major is going to do, how it’s going to add to the overall curriculum at BC,” McGuffey said. “You have to put a committee together of folks—not just in your department—but outside of your department as well. And then you actually make your argument.”
Four years later, in 2023, AADS achieved another success when the Educational Policy Committee approved the transition of the pilot to an official major.
“The Educational Policy Committee decided that the pilot was a success,” Summers said. “And so we became, we formally became a major.”
For members of the program, this development was a long time coming.
“We had been talking about the work to become a major since, I think, I came to BC,” McGuffey said. “So to finally see that cross the line was impressive.”
All AADS majors are required to take Introduction to African Diaspora Studies, which provides them with a background in the historical, cultural, social, and political topics related to Africa and the African Diaspora.
“What I really emphasize in [the] class is that I want students to really engage with the African Diaspora,” McGuffey said.
According to the AADS website, the major offers two tracks: Intellectual Traditions and Cultural Production, which has a humanities focus, and Politics and Social Inquiry, which is more social-science heavy.
Students also take four “Black Atlantic” courses, according to Lorelle Semley, current director of the program.
“The program has students have to take four what we call “Black Atlantic” courses, meaning that they are courses that compare two regions of Africa and the African diaspora,” Semley said.
The institution of a formal major and the growing course offerings that accompanied it necessitated an increase in faculty members to support the program.
“We’ve done significant hiring, and since we’ve become a major, we’ve done cluster hires, where we hire multiple people at one time,” McGuffey said. “And those cluster hires have been really important to helping us, to helping us grow.”
During his 2021–2023 tenure as director, Summers successfully proposed a cluster hire to search for four new assistant professors in AADS, according to the AADS website.
According to Summers, the cluster hire included two core AADS faculty members who are psychologists or psychology professors, further growing the program’s interdisciplinary offerings.
As of 2026, the number of AADS core faculty members is 12, according to Summers, a number triple the amount of core faculty before 2008. Their specialties range from sociology to art history, theology to psychology, and beyond.
The diversification of offerings within the program provides students with a greater variety of ideas to explore in the classroom.
“As we increase the types of courses that we’re teaching, and the different areas that we’re teaching, it just expands people’s idea of what African and African Diaspora studies can do,” McGuffey said.
Beyond the Classroom Walls
According to Richard Paul, assistant director, a major goal of the program is to nurture an intellectual community that goes beyond campus grounds.
A major way that AADS seeks to fulfill this goal is through its “Blacks in Boston” conference series.
The series, which began in 1983 under Amanda V. Houston, aimed to bring together scholars and the Boston-area Black community to address a variety of issues. Past conferences focused on subjects such as the struggle for equal education and the role of African immigrants in the city.
“She had this vision of not only bringing in scholars who could talk about an issue that was important to the Black community, but also really trying to integrate the Black community itself into the conference,” Summers said.
Yet, the conferences stopped in the 80s, according to Frederick, until she discovered a box of materials from past “Blacks in Boston” conferences in the AADS office and decided to revive the series.
“So I went through this box, and I was like, ‘Look at this resource that we have here,’” Frederick said. “‘Why did these conferences stop? How do we get it?’ So I was like, ‘Let’s do it again.’”
And so they did. In 2016, the AADS program organized the first “Blacks in Boston” conference in decades, focusing particularly on the intersection of the Black and immigrant communities in the city.
Successive conferences have been held in 2016, 2018, and 2022, with another one scheduled for this March, supported by funding from the MCAS Dean’s Office procured by Summers.
For many members of the program, AADS is more than an academic community, though—it is a safe space for authentic connection.
“I think we’re unique in that students see us, not just as a major—like I do feel like we are a community,” McGuffey said. “I feel like we are a home for students who may have a difficult time finding a home at BC.”
McGuffey emphasized that he feels it is part of his own commitment as a professor to help his students think about their place in the world.
“Not only what do you want to contribute to help you feed your family, which is, of course, very important, but how do you want to be as a human being?” McGuffey said. “How do you want to navigate the world? I think that’s also what you can take from AADS: how to be a human.”
Looking Forward
Despite the successes the AADS program has achieved over the past 20 years, challenges remain.
“The thing that we’re working through the most is sort of changing perceptions about what a major and a minor in African and African Diaspora Studies are and can be,” Frederick said.
McGuffey echoed her sentiments.
“I think students love our courses to fulfill the cultural diversity requirement, right?” McGuffey said. “But I think it’s another thing to get them to think of us as a potential major.”
Members of the program hope to continue recruiting more students to the major and minor by emphasizing the beneficial skills and connections the program provides.
As the program looks into the future, some wonder what the next step will look like.
“Right now, we’re an academic program: ‘What’s that? What’s the next step? Are we talking about the department, the center?’” Paul said. “I don’t know the answer to that, but that’s something I think, in terms of the long term, figuring out if it’s if we are at the level, or place, to become a department or something else greater.”
No matter what the future may hold, the past 20 years have shaped AADS into what it is today: both an academic and intellectual hub and a center of community and understanding.
“I really do feel like we are a community who look after each other, not just intellectually, but as fully developed human beings,” McGuffey said.
