Grinnell College’s African Diaspora Studies (ADS) Department is on track to offer a concentration and major to students within the next four years, said John Thabiti Willis, Kesho Scott endowed chair in African Diaspora Studies.
Willis said he has been collaborating with the registrar’s office to establish an ADS concentration. He said he hopes to formally launch the concentration as soon as next semester.
Willis said the process of building the ADS major curriculum is a four-year plan.
This year, the department is working with faculty across the College to get a sense of the range of ADS or cross-listed courses that current faculty are interested in teaching.
Next year, Willis plans to hire a post-doctoral fellow to help develop an ADS introduction and methods courses, as well as potentially teach a 200-level class on their personal area of expertise.
“Grinnell is serious about ADS and committed to being a place where young scholars can work on their scholarship and be part of a vibrant intellectual community,” said Willis.
Years three and four of the plan will be focused on completing the curriculum by hiring to fill the two new full-time professor positions allocated to the department.
“Hopefully by that stage, we will be in a position to have enough core courses, particularly intro, methods, and senior seminars, to be able to launch a major,” said Willis.
In spring 2026, Willis will be leading a group of students to Bahrain, a small country off the coast of Saudi Arabia, as part of an ADS course-embedded travel class. He plans to teach about the region’s cultural connections to East Africa that date back to its days as a hub for trade and pearl-diving.
Previous Grinnell Black and Africana studies programs in the 1970s and 2000s each shut down after less than a decade.
However, Willis said students can expect ADS to be here to stay, pointing to strong institutional support from the College president and Board of Trustees as well as the creation of an endowment fund for the department.
The fund is named for Dr. Kesho Scott, distinguished professor of sociology and the first tenured Black woman in the history of Grinnell College.
“What an endowment does … is it ensures that there’s a commitment within the institution beyond simply the priorities of a budget at a particular moment in time,” said Willis.
Both Willis and other professors involved in the department expressed excitement about the possibilities for ADS to connect disciplines across the college.
“Oftentimes when we think of quote-unquote ‘Black stuff’ it’s thought of as not central to things, right? It’s an elective or it’s an interest,” said Makeba Lavan, assistant professor of English and member of the ADS steering committee.
She said ADS is an opportunity to recognize the central role of Black and African studies in the humanities and sciences.
Lavan plans to have her African-American literature and seminar courses cross-listed as part of ADS.
Darrius Hills, also on the ADS steering committee and an associate professor of religious studies, also plans to cross-list many of the courses he teaches.
“It’ll be interesting to see what kind of questions students bring to my religion courses as a result of juxtaposing that with exposure to the readings and the discourses they have with Dr. Willis,” said Hills, whose scholarly work focuses largely on African-American religious thought.
Aside from coursework, Willis said the department plans to bring in leading ADS academics from other colleges to Grinnell for a speaker series, as well as potentially hire an artist-in-residence.
