The Black Studies minor at the UO draws from courses across the curriculum that survey histories of the African Diaspora, Black political ideologies and practices, intellectual and ideological traditions, as well as the cultural expressions and creative arts of Black peoples in the West. Black Studies faculty make plain the correlation between discursive and material anti-blackness, “blackness” as a racial formation and its relation to African-descended people. The interdisciplinary minor also emphasizes the heterogeneity of Black experiences, by paying attention to intersections of ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and related vectors of sociopolitical power.   

Black Studies minors are required to take either ES 250 Introduction to Black Studies or ANTH 241 Introduction to Anthropology of the African Diaspora to provide theoretical and historical grounding in the field.  The course of study after that is determined by the need for three additional lower division Black Studies courses and three upper-division Black Studies courses of the student's choice. Students are encouraged to meet with the Program Director to map out their minor completion plan after taking ES 250 or ANTH 241.