The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, also known as the Hutchins Center, is affiliated with

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. The Center supports scholarly research on the history and culture of

people of African descent The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from people from Africa. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the native West and Central Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas via the ...

around the world, facilitates collaboration and aims to increase public awareness of the subject. It was established as the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute in May 1975, making it the oldest research center focused on the study of the history, culture, and society of Africans and

African Americans African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa ...

, with the rebranding as the Hutchins Center occurring in 2013.

Affiliated institutes

The Hutchins Center includes or supports a number of research institutes and projects, including the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute, the Afro-Latin American Research Institute, the Image of the Black Archive & Library, the Project on Race & Gender in Science & Medicine, the History Design Studio and the Jazz Research Initiative. It is also home to the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, also known as the Cooper Gallery.

History

The Center was established as the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute in May 1975, making it the oldest research center focused on the study of the history, culture, and society of Africans and

. It was named after the first African American to be awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. It was established to create fellowships that would "facilitate the writing of doctoral dissertations in areas related to Afro-American Studies". The Hutchins Center was launched in September 2013, named in honor of a $15 million gift from the Hutchins Family Foundation endowed by

Glenn Hutchins Glenn Hogan Hutchins (born 1955) is an American businessman and investor. He is a private equity investor focused on the technology sector, chairman and co-founder of North Island, and co-founder of Silver Lake Partners. Early life and educati ...

. It continued to incorporate the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute.

Description

The Hutchins Center supports scholarly research on the history and culture of people of African descent around the world, facilitates collaboration and aims to increase public awareness of the subject.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950), popularly known by his childhood nickname "Skip", is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of t ...

is the director of the Center.

Publications and projects

The Center publishes ''

Transition Magazine ''Transition Magazine'' was established in 1961 by Rajat Neogy as ''Transition Magazine: An International Review''. It was published from 1961 to 1976 in various countries on the African continent, and since 1991 in the United States. In recen ...

'', and is connected to the ''

Du Bois Review The ''Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering multidisciplinary and multicultural social science research and criticism about race. The journal was established in 2004 and is published by Cam ...

'' (edited by W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard Lawrence D. Bobo). The

African American National Biography Project The African American National Biography Project is a joint project of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University and Oxford University Press. The object of the project is to publish and maintain a database o ...

is a joint project of the Hutchins Center and

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. The Center supported the establishment of the

Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, formerly the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership, is a research centre of University College, London (UCL) that focuses on revealing the impact of Slavery ...

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

. The Centre's online database, the Legacies of British Slave-ownership, is free for public use.

W. E. B. Du Bois Medal

In 2000, the Hutchins Center began awarding the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, which is considered Harvard's highest honor in the field of African and African American studies.

References

External links

* {{Harvard University Black studies organizations Harvard University research institutes