With hopes of being able to offer students more than 12 courses each semester, the small, interdisciplinary African and African American Studies program in the College of Arts and Sciences is seeking to expand into a full department.
AAAS is designed to teach students about the life, history and culture of Africans throughout their migration across the world. The program draws its curriculum from African and African-American related classes in history, sociology, anthropology, political science, English, music and foreign language.
Students cannot earn a major in AAAS, but any liberal arts major may have a concentration in AAAS. They can also minor in AAAS.
Angeletta Gourdine, the program’s director since November 2004, said she wants to step up the program by bringing in more faculty, offering more classes and getting more students interested and involved in AAAS.
Department status would mean more money and resources from the University, which would enable AAAS to hire more full-time professors to teach and research AAAS related-issues specifically.
Most of the AAAS faculty comes from the sociology, political science, history and English departments.
The only specifically AAAS faculty members are instructors, and like other departments on campus, may be finding themselves teaching fewer and fewer classes as the Flagship Agenda is implemented.
Because of the Flagship Agenda, the University is moving toward having tenure-track professors teach courses — and AAAS is no different. Gourdine said it will not change any of the courses AAAS offers, but it will change who teaches the classes.
The Rev. Herman Kelly, who teaches AAAS courses, “The Black Church” and “Malcolm & Martin,” is one of about three instructors in the AAAS program without a Ph.D.
Kelly declined to comment about teaching in upcoming semesters, but said his life experiences — he was a Martin Luther King, Jr. fellow at Boston University and is pastor at Bethel A.M.E. Church in Baton Rouge — bring a new dimension to the classroom.
“I’ve lived the courses I teach,” he said.
Kelly is only scheduled this fall to teach one class, “The Black Church.” After teaching two courses for several years, he said he is not sure why he is only teaching one.
The changes are not just about bringing AAAS professors.
Gourdine said she also wants to continue to increase the University faculty involvement across disciplines.
Mass communication professor David Perlmutter said he sat in on Arts and Sciences College discussions to pursue department status and is interested in helping the AAAS department develop.
Perlmutter said he is interested in researching images of minorities and race issues in the news and entertainment media and said he thinks those issues are typically interesting to students.
“My own feeling is that a lot of issues that are dealt within the [AAAS] program are not just for minorities, but for all students,” he said.
Stephen Lucas, director of the Office of International Programs who also teaches a section of AAAS 2050 “Contemporary Africa” once a year, said he hopes expanding to a department will bring more classes about Africa.
Lucas said most of the classes offered now deal predominately with African-American issues.
He also said it is important to expand the program to give students — especially black students — more diverse classes.
“LSU has a diversity issue,” he said. “We’re trying to provide more classes of interest to the African-American community.”
Lucas said the University must in turn find professors to teach the new courses and manage the department.
“With the Flagship Agenda, we have to start offering [AAAS] classes of interest and begin selective hires,” Lucas said. “We have to bring on campus other professors instead of just old white males like me.”