For nearly forty years, the College failed to sustain more than one full-time appointment in Africana Studies, which had immense implications for students’ ability to complete the major, the available mentorship for black students, and on the advisorship of the African American Society. Randy Stakeman was the final professor to maintain all of these roles at once, in addition to serving as associate dean of the faculty and overseer of Bowdoin’s Mellon Mays program. Upon Stakeman’s retirement in 2006, President Barry Mills determined to focus the College’s recently-launched capital campaign, at least partly, on raising funds to establish four additional Africana Studies professorships. Due in part to this investment, the program is stronger than it has ever been. With the celebration of the program’s 50th anniversary, it is important to remember that this strength is both recent and long-fought-for—not just in these fifty years, but in Bowdoin’s longer history of racism and slow change.
Reevaluate, Restructure
In 1990, Afro-American Studies conducted a self-study while a committee of external reviewers also evaluated the program. Both studies laid out several recommendations for the College to improve the program. The least expensive was changing the name to Africana Studies to reflect the curricular shift Bolles had initiated ten years prior. Other recommendations included establishing several new faculty lines in the program. The external committee wrote: “Stabilizing faculty appointments is particularly important in this transition stage. In other words, establishing this ‘critical mass’ of faculty is a matter of urgency.’”