1 GRADUATE COUNCIL MEETING 9 May 2012 102 Kern Graduate ...

H4
I. Objectives and Justification for the Program
A. Need for the Program
The African continent is an increasingly important actor in the global geopolitics of the twentyfirst
century. Many countries on the continent are major energy centers and leading producers of
mineral resources, which are critical to the stability of the current international economic system.
In addition to its historical role as a source of raw materials, Africa has become a growing
market for manufactured goods from northern countries and an attractive destination for foreign
direct investment from all over the world. These fundamental structural attributes have made
twenty-first century Africa an important arena over which the European Union, the US, China
and other developed and newly-developing countries and regions vie for access to economic
opportunities and political influence.
Graduate students from Penn State’s multiplicity of academic and sociocultural backgrounds
who wish to study Africa’s role in the present global system, must be provided with an
intellectual ‘home’ to do so. The proposed dual-title doctoral degree program will provide this
opportunity by allowing Penn State doctoral students to obtain an African Studies specialization
to complement the degree in their major discipline.
A significant number of Africa-related graduate courses are being offered by a variety of
departments at Penn State (Table 1). The information indicates that a significant corpus of
intellectual curiosity concerning the African continent exists among Penn State upper-level
undergraduate and graduate students. The current 400-level and 500-level courses are, however,
often offered in departmental and disciplinary isolation, with limited intellectual crossfertilization.
The proposed dual-title doctoral degree program will provide students with a
physical and intellectual framework within which they can integrate their courses in a systematic
way to engage in comparative, multidisciplinary African Studies.
The multidisciplinary approach of the proposed program will utilize the expertise of existing
Africanists at Penn State to design courses, which will adopt the lens of the humanities, social
sciences, education, bio-behavioral sciences, and environmental sciences, as necessary and
applicable. For example, analyses of governance issues in Africa will not be merely a traditional
Political Science enquiry. Rather, it will integrate principles of climate change and resource
competition, political ecology, history, ethnicities, language and/or linguistics. In the same vein,
relevant comparative analyses will be invoked to interrogate pertinent issues of African
development, including such cutting edge issues as refugees, child labor, the sex trade, terrorism,
and food security.
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