The Best Graduate Programs in African-American Literature

According to the latest ranking of graduate education programs by U.S. News & World Report, Harvard University has the nation’s top program in African-American literature. Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., the outgoing chair of the African and African-American studies department, has spent the past 15 years building the nation’s premier program in black literature. The department has experienced many key defections in recent years, but none of the major academic figures who have left Harvard have been in the field of literature, in which Gates himself is a preeminent scholar.

Princeton University ranked second to Harvard in graduate programs in African-American Literature. Also among the top 10 graduate programs in African-American literature are Duke, Yale, Chapel Hill, Columbia, Berkeley, Cornell, the University of Maryland, and the University of Virginia.

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