On Friday, Oct. 18, a dinner celebration hosted by the Black Student Union (BSU) at Coltrane Lounge welcomed the Black Studies Program as well as many interested students and returning alumni to gather and commemorate the department’s fifth year anniversary. More than 30 people showed up to the event.
The Black Studies Program was approved by the administration in May 2019, but the major did not start running with courses listed until spring 2021. That year, there was one student majoring in the program and two interested students. As of now, the program has 13 majors and 11 minors.
President of BSU Che DeFreitas ’27 explained that the opportunity to host the event came up naturally.
“From what I can remember, we needed an event for this month, and as we were planning, we realized it was the Black Studies Department’s fifth year anniversary. So we’re like, ‘We have to do something!’” he said.
DeFreitas was delighted to have hosted the celebration for people to enjoy and commemorate the moment.
“We really just needed to host something like this, show up, and celebrate this, because this is a milestone and it needs to be preserved and seen,” he added.
Professor Emeritus of History and Black Studies Bill Hart, who gave a short speech at the beginning of the event, was one of the first faculty members to promote the major. He noted that students have demanded the addition of Black Studies courses and the major for a long time.
“Students have been asking for Black Studies for decades,” he said. “But it took a few critical moments for the administration to come around to authorizing that.”
Jerry Philogene, associate professor and program director of Black Studies, acknowledged the progress the department achieved in the short span of five years. Since the department’s establishment, it has acquired funding for two tenure track positions as well as two senior positions, one of which is held by Philogene and the other is open for hire.
“I think my colleagues have done an amazing job in creating, maintaining and sustaining the department. Having two tenure track positions in a newly formed department is an amazing accomplishment,” she said. “I’m excited to have Professor Davis and Professor Huang with us.”
Assistant Professor of Black Studies Khyree Davis emphasized the multitudes of the Black Studies Department with its unique scholarly approaches.
“As a department and a program, we’ve got a lot going on. We’ve grown our major, which is really interesting, and our students are really engaged in some fascinating projects. For instance, Crystal Zhou [’23.5], who graduated just last winter and was my major advisee, we did work together looking at black Vermont farming, and it resulted in a 70-plus page magazine,” Davis said, adding that the final product is now included in the department’s courses.
Viola Huang, assistant professor of Black Studies, relayed a recent trip to a conference she had taken with a Black Studies student who researched the Black Lives Matter movement in Germany.
“She already presented her research in our class and the spring student symposium, but we were just at the German Studies Association in Atlanta, Georgia three weeks ago, presenting our research at a scholarly conference,” Huang said.
Huang also acknowledged the deep engagement with the department by students on campus hailing from a wide variety of academic backgrounds and experiences.
“We have so many students from across the campus. We don’t just teach our majors, but so many students from Econ, from STEM, from the languages, they all bring Black Studies back to their departments,” she said. “You can see Black Studies all around campus.”
As a Black Studies and Economics double major, DeFreitas echoed Huang’s statement, adding that he enjoys doing both fields at the same time.
“I really like it. It’s my pleasure major. It’s very fulfilling for me. I actually got into it almost accidentally, when I was just registering for classes as a first year,” DeFreitas said.
DeFreitas also appreciates the various learning methods the department encourages within its scope of study in addition to the traditional academic training, and the sense of belonging that was formed while engaging in collective learning.
“I took Black Thought, which is the theory class, last spring. For the final project, we all had to come together in groups, and we had to make board games,” he said. “I enjoyed that this department allows creativity in it. There’s also so much community, especially among the majors. Granted, there’s not that many of us, but still it’s nice to have a classroom where everybody is majoring in the same thing.”
When asked about the changes in the department throughout its five-year growth, Philogene noted that its reach has increased, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
“It’s gotten bigger!” she said. “We now just need space to take all of that!”
Hart drew attention to the many interdisciplinary courses that now stretch across departments within the scope of Black Studies.
“Because it’s a program, it means it’s interdisciplinary, so it draws on courses from across the curriculum. So the first year I think we had a dozen courses representing about six disciplines,” he said.
Philogene echoed the cross-departmental composition of the Black Studies course catalog.
“We have the core courses that we teach, but we also have seven cross-listed courses from a variety of departments because faculties want to have that connection with Black Studies. So I think that’s really important,” Philogene said.
Black Studies has drawn many resources from courses offered in the other departments, and vice versa. Huang now has classes cross-listed with Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies as well as German, and Davis with the Geography Department. Philogene will soon add one more to the list by cross-listing a course with the History of Art and Architecture department.
Davis highlighted how this reflects the inherently expansive approach of Black Studies itself, in that it demands students to approach issues in the field with a broad mind with the support of a strong faculty group.
“I think it’s important that we’re not just interdisciplinary. We have people situated in Black Studies doing the work out of that. It’s important for our students to tackle the field directly too, ” Davis said.
In a rapidly changing world, many are re-evaluating the idea and importance of a liberal arts education. In response to a demand to redefine and reshape academia, Philogene believes Black Studies has great potential in drawing ideas and fields of studies together.
“I refute this idea that Black Studies is only the study of Black people. I think that’s a limiting and essentialist idea. I think what Black Studies does is it prioritizes the history of people, but in a relationship to the world,” she said. “It’s about an epistemology, it’s about a way of knowing and a way of thinking, and I think everybody needs that.”
Tying the matter back to the emerging Black Studies departments across college campuses, Davis noted the deeply intertwined effort from various sides.
“Looking at the history we all know here, it’s been Black students who have been involved in the struggle for Black Studies, but it’s also been other students as well. It’s been a cross-racial coalition for Black Studies and other forms of ethnic studies on campus since they first came up in the 1960s,” he said.
Huang agreed that the idea of Black Studies emerges from a complex history with roots in prolonged human conflict.
“When we think about the history of Black Studies, we should keep in mind that Black Studies emerged out of a struggle. I feel we are in a moment where there will be struggle, and there is struggle, so I think Black Studies is so essential to have at this moment,” she said.
Caroline (Xiaoyuan) Jiao (she/her) is a News Editor.
Caroline was previously a contributing writer for The Campus. She spent the summer of 2024 interning as a news reporter at the Addison Independent, covering local county events. She also worked as a Narrative Journalism Fellow during the 2023-2024 academic year, making podcasts from student interviews.
Caroline is a Literary Studies major. She calls Beijing, China home, and she enjoys the tight-knit community of the town of Middlebury. One can often find her in proximity to the knoll or cooking with friends, and she takes pride in a Chinese-language literary magazine she and her friends are running.
