Ast/Asc/Full Professor Tenure System - AAAS

Working/Functional Title

Ast/Asc/Full Professor Tenure System - AAAS

Position Summary

The Department of African American and African Studies (AAAS) invites applications for an assistant professor tenure-stream faculty position (9-month appointment) and an open rank faculty position in Black Feminisms, Genders, and Sexualities Studies (9-month appointment) in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. The position (both hires) is a 100% appointment in African American and African Studies and begins August 16, 2025.  

AAAS at MSU was initially founded as a Ph.D. granting program in 2002 as a unit committed to making concrete connections between faculty scholarship, pedagogy, and social justice causes. On July 1, 2019, AAAS became a department. An undergraduate major was launched in 2022 to extend the Black Studies experience to an increasingly interested undergraduate population. As of spring 2024, we successfully graduated the first cohort of AAAS Bachelors of Arts. The Department of African American and African Studies embraces diverse approaches to intellectual leadership and artist-scholarship. We welcome interdisciplinary and integrated research, teaching, creative work, and engagement practices that are leading-edge in the doing of Black Studies. As a department our areas of specialization include Black Feminisms, Genders, and Sexualities Studies in all aspects of curriculum. Within the AAAS major, the curriculum is shaped by three concentrations: Communities in Action; Creative Expression, Culture, and Performance; and Black Institutions, Sustainability, and Statecraft.  

Our new colleague(s) will play a key role in collaboratively building AAAS with core areas in Black Feminisms, Genders, and Sexualities Studies. The normal teaching load is 2-2 (two courses per semester). The successful candidate will maintain high quality scholarship in Black Studies or related interdisciplinary fields and approaches. A typical workload percentage for a 100% appointment in the College of Arts and Letters is 40% research, 40% teaching, 20% service. The service load for this position (both hires) will be distinctive as the candidate(s) will provide support to the new build of the AAAS Department. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:   

• Aiding in the implementation of strategic short- and long-range plans for departmental development;   
• Assisting in the creation and implementation of operating policies and procedures, including best and promising practices for recruiting outstanding faculty, students, and staff;   
• Collaborating with AAAS faculty in sustaining public-facing humanities research agendas and excellence in outreach to foster and produce knowledge in the field and local communities.   

Qualifications: 

We seek candidates who hold a terminal degree (doctorate or MFA) in their field and demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach to leading-edge Black Studies. Leading-edge Black Studies across our curriculum in AAAS at MSU includes, but is not limited to, these areas: Black Ecologies (e.g. Outdoors, Nature, Land movements, Geographies, Environmental Justice, etc.), Speculative Arts (e.g. Black Futures, Black Fantastic, Black Funk, Radical Imagination, Otherworldly and Underground Constructions of Blackness, and Black Arts practices and aesthetics), and Black Institutions and Practices (e.g. Media, Sound Studies, Music Production, Community-Based Organizations, Activism, Abolition, Black Diasporic Spirituality, Dance, Entrepreneurship, Quare studies, Queer of Color Critique, Abolition, and/or Healing and Wellness etc.).

Candidates should possess excellent communication skills. Successful candidates should have a demonstrated history of community engagement, community accountability, and/or community-based approaches to scholarship. Candidates should have a capacity to engage in curriculum and departmental development. Preference will be given to candidates who can research and teach in Black Feminisms, Genders, and Sexualities Studies and engage in service related to building a new department as well as contribute to the current AAAS curriculum.  

Candidates must demonstrate commitment to and alignment with department vision and values. As a department that is newly building, we have found transformative justice and leadership development processes critical to creating new departmental policies, procedures, etc. We actively engage and practice dreaming and wellness, individually and together, as a department. Candidates must welcome and be ready to engage these change efforts with openness and care.  

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, citizenship, age, disa