A university department announced they would only consider applicants “interested in working in and with Black studies” in the 2020-2021 admissions cycle.
As the English Department of the University of Chicago revealed in a July statement, they are supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement which is why they will only accept applicants who are willing to work in the field of African-American studies.
“The English department at the University of Chicago believes that Black Lives Matter, and that the lives of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks matter, as do thousands of others named and unnamed who have been subject to police violence,” the faculty statement reads.point 404 | 1
“As literary scholars, we attend to the histories, atmospheres, and scenes of anti-Black racism and racial violence in the United States and across the world. We are committed to the struggle of Black and Indigenous people, and all racialized and dispossessed people, against inequality and brutality.”
According to the department, they remain committed not only to “ideas in the abstract but also to activating histories of engaged art, debate, struggle, collective action, and counterrevolution as contexts for the emergence of ideas and narratives.”
The faculty statement also made it clear that “for the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle” the English department would only be considering “applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies.”
“We understand Black Studies to be a capacious intellectual project that spans a variety of methodological approaches, fields, geographical areas, languages, and time periods,” the statement elaborated.
“For more information of faculty and current graduate students in this area, please visit our Black Studies page.”
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Replaced!