Faculty Research

With faculty specializing in literatures of Africa in Arabic, English, French, Hausa, Portuguese, and Spanish Rutgers is an extraordinary center for the study of literatures of Africa. Rutgers also has unusual strength in African linguistics.

Faculty whose work explores the literatures and languages of Africa include: Richard Serrano, Ousseina Alidou, Abena Busia, Renée Larrier, Susan Martin-Marquez, Akinbiyi Akinlabi, César Braga-Pinto, Yeon-Soo Kim, and Phillip Rothwell.

For more information see the Program in Comparative Literature (http://complit.rutgers.edu) or contact Richard Serrano (732.932.8223 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

Students interested in women and gender in Africa have the benefit of many interdisciplinary African Studies faculty who work on gender combined with the extraordinary strengths in gender research, activism, and teaching at Rutgers at the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, The Institute for Research on Women, and the Institute for Women's Global Leadership. Faculty research touches upon health, religion, war, ethnicity and politics. Departments in which students can do specialized work on gender in Africa include: Anthropology, History, Geography, and Women's and Gender Studies.

Faculty whose work has addressed gender directly include: Abena P.A. Busia, Dorothy Hodgson, Barbara Cooper, Julie Livingston, Meredeth Turshen, Barbara Callaway, Richard Schroeder, Sarah Brett-Smith, Renée Larrier and Ousseina Alidou.

Rutgers has unusual strength in African social and cultural history, with four faculty members who work directly on Africa and numerous faculty whose work in comparative, global, imperial or diaspora history contributes in direct ways to a deeper understanding of African history.

The Rutgers History Department has four faculty members specializing directly in African History: Allen Howard, Carolyn Brown, Julie Livingston, and Barbara Cooper.

Rutgers is a particularly suitable place for students seeking to do graduate work in the following areas, given the strengths and research interests of our faculty overall:

• West Africa
• Women and Gender in Africa
• History of Health and the Human Body in Africa
• African Cities
• African Labor History
• Religion in Africa
• Africa and the African Diaspora
• Africa and French Empire

Students of the contemporary African environment benefit from dynamic interdisciplinary faculty in Geography, Human Ecology, and Anthropology.

Faculty whose work touches upon the African environment and issues of development include: Angelique Haugerud, Richard Schroeder, Dorothy Hodgson, David Hughes, and Bonnie McCay. 

Rutgers is nationally recognized as a key site for the study of policy in Africa through the Bloustein School. With faculty in a variety of other units and disciplines who focus upon urban Africa students, interested in urban studies will find Rutgers an exciting place.

Faculty who study the complexities of urban Africa include: Salah El-Shakhs, Allen Howard and Meredeth Turshen.