The History of Africa poses some of the discipline’s most interesting and difficult challenges. It is a continent with a deep and sophisticated history, one with much greater depth than the well-known histories of slavery and colonialism might indicate. Historians of Africa, employing a variety of primary sources and methodologies, must come to grips with both the complexity and vigor of pre-colonial Africa; the transformations that came with the expansion of Islam; the arrival of Europeans, the waves of globalization brought by both colonial rule and decolonization; Pan-African movements; contemporary conflicts; but also with peoples and ideas that the African continent has exported to the Mediterranean world, Middle East, and the Western Hemisphere.

Graduate study in African History takes place within a rich environment. Building on a long tradition of excellence in the study of African history, the department’s current expertise ranges from East to West Africa, and from Egypt to Southern Africa. Outside the department, students may draw on the support of the long-established Center for African Studies (CAS) sponsored by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI Comprehensive National Resource Center and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) - granting institution, in partnership with the Program of African Studies (PAS) at Northwestern University. CAS brings together faculty from across different disciplines such as anthropology, English, French, geography, linguistics, political science, religious studies, and sociology, and hosts major conferences and weekly talks. 

Campus Resources

African languages taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign include Arabic, Swahili, Wolof, and Zulu. CAS and other areas studies centers at Illinois administer academic year Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships supporting support and undergraduate study of less commonly taught languages in combination with area studies. Opportunities for summer language study with summer FLAS fellowships include the Illinois Summer Institute for the Languages of the Muslim World, and the summer Group Projects Abroad (GPA). Off-campus opportunities for language study include language instruction through the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and Foreign Language Enhancement Program (FLEP).

Our University Library hosts several resources for students and researchers in African History: The Middle East and North Africa Collection (MENA) as well as the Africana collections are among the best in North America. Furthermore, the University Archives also hosts more than 2000 Arabic manuscripts from Mauritanian in the Charles C. Stewart Papers, which represent a still untapped resource for the study of Islamic West Africa.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has also a large community of African graduate students and hosts the vibrant African Students Organization (ASO).