Students hoping to gain an understanding of the African American experience can get started right here in Clarksville, thanks to the African American Studies program at Austin Peay State University.
The program can trace its roots back to 1968 when founder Betty Joe Wallace chaired a committee that examined adding classes in African American Studies (AAST). Today, 15 students are pursuing a minor through the program and dozens more are taking elective courses from among its offerings.
As an interdisciplinary program of study, AAST exposes students to the history and culture of African Americans in the United States and connects those experiences to the peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, according to the University.
Two professors are working to help students explore coursework in the arts and culture.
“We should be looking at arts and culture through the lens of the African American experience,” APSU African American Studies Professor Marcus Hayes and Assistant Professor Eboné Amos agree.
“I think teaching African American Studies through arts and culture just gives the students a way to enter into having conversations about historical things that they don’t really know much about,” Amos said. “I use contemporary experiences as an African American to not only relate to my students, but to teach them that things that happened so long ago can still have a lot of contemporary application.”
Amos and Hayes note that their backgrounds in dance have…
