Check out some of our our fantastic students & alumni!
Breigha Adeyemo is an ABD PhD candidate in the Communications Department with a Black Studies concentration, and her work is at the intersections of technology, social justice, and capitalism. Her dissertation examines black women’s digital praxis in the metaverse and how those function as ‘system overrides’. Adeyemo is the recipient of the 2021 Graduate Instructor Award, the 2022 Grace Holt Memorial Award, and a 2023-2024 Grant Awardee from UIC’s Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy. She has published in Feminist Media Studies (FMS) and presented her research at various conferences, including ACM, CHI, and ICA. Listen to her most recent feature in the podcast Wine Note in an episode on “Intersectional Oppression and the Metaverse here”.
Zia George is a 4th-year architecture student minoring in Black Studies. George is the recipient of the 2022 Marie Nesbitt Promise Prize, and is currently the Co-President of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS). George says that “Black Studies is a powerful tool and educational instrument and using what I’ve learned over the past 4 years will help me excel in my future ambitions to create beautiful environments and spaces for the Black community”.
Aremu Smith is a PhD student in the Department of Educational Psychology with a Black Studies concentration. His interests center broadly on the ways in which the gendered and racial socialization occurs for Black boys. He was selected as an 2023-2024 Emerging Scholar for the National African American Child and Family Research Center based in the Morehouse School of Medicine. Most recently, he co-authored the essay “Hair Messages: A Context for Exploring Racial Socialization Among African American Males”.
Yvonne Monique Livingston is an alumni of the Black Studies department, previously majoring in Black Studies and Psychology. She is a former 2019 Promise Prize and Grace Holt Award recipient and a formidable entrepreneur, currently working as a Community Engagement Coordinator with the Urban Youth Trauma Center and the Pediatric Stress Anxiety Disorder Clinic here at UIC. Livingston is currently working on a manuscript with the National Child Trauma Stress Network concerning community-based mental health partnerships.
Why Black Studies?
A Message from the Head
Welcome to UIC’s department of Black Studies! Black Studies takes as its analytic starting point the lived experiences and community formations of Black people across the African diaspora, including Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. We place our in-depth analyses of Black people in critical conversation with those of other communities, recognizing the need to understand both parallels and divergences.
Black Studies uses robust multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to studying complex social problems and recognizes the importance of generating insights from beyond a single disciplinary perspective. Core and affiliated faculty in Black Studies hail from a variety of fields, including English, Political Science, History, Sociology, Performance Studies, Gender Studies, and Anthropology.
Black Studies at UIC houses and supports the Black Midwest Initiative (BMI), a progressive collective of scholars, students, activists, organizers, and community-involved people focused on documenting and advocating for the lives of people of African descent situated throughout the Midwest and Rust Belt regions of the United States.
Students pursuing the undergraduate major or minor in Black Studies learn about the Black diaspora in ways that engage and inspire while being trained in critical thinking, written communication, and the practice of research—all of which are suitable for a variety of career pathways. Graduate and pre-professional students seeking to add depth to their understanding of aspects of the Black diaspora can find a supportive intellectual community by pursuing our graduate concentration in Black Studies.
We invite you to become part of our community and join us at our events. If you’d like to know more about Black Studies at UIC, please contact us.
Joseph O. Jewell
Professor & Head
