Philosophy and Black Studies Combined Ph.D. Program

The Philosophy Department will accept applications to the Philosophy and Black Studies combined program in the fall of 2027 for matriculation in the fall of 2028. 

Prospective students interested in matriculating in the fall of 2027 may apply to the combined program through Black studies.

The Philosophy and Black Studies Combined PhD. Program is for students wishing to pursue graduate study at the intersection of Philosophy and Black Studies. A student applying to the Combined Program must submit a single application, it being understood that admission to the Combined Program requires admission by both departments.Students in the Combined Program are members of both the Philosophy Department and the Black Studies Department, and both Philosophy and Black Studies faculty advise and mentor them.  The program is overseen by Professor Robert Gooding-Williams and the Directors of Graduate Studies in Philosophy and Black Studies.

Degree Requirements

Course requirements:

12 seminars, eight in Philosophy and four in Black Studies. 

  1. Two first-year courses: the First-Year Seminar in Philosophy (PHIL 7705) and Theorizing Racial Formations (AFAM 5005)
  2. Graduate students must take three other graduate-level Black Studies courses: (1) a history course; (2) a social science course, and (3) a course in literature or culture.

  3. The eight courses in philosophy should be distributed as follows:
    Three courses in the Philosophy of Race or the history of Africana philosophy, some or all of which may be cross-listed with Black Studies. 

    Five courses the focus of which is not in the Philosophy of Race or the history of Africana philosophy.  Of these five, at least one should be in the history of philosophy; at least one should be in Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind or Philosophy of Language; and at least one should be in ethics and value theory. Students are required to satisfy the formal methods requirement with a course in either Philosophy, Black Studies, or another department, pending approval by the Philosophy DGS. They are not required to satisfy the skills requirement.  Students will be expected to complete their coursework by the end of their second year.  

Two qualifying papers must be submitted, one in the history of philosophy, the other in another distribution area.  The history paper may or may not be in the history of Africana Philosophy. If it is in the history of Africana Philosophy, then the second qualifying paper must be in another distribution area (not history) and on a topic other than the philosophy of race. If the history paper is not in the history of the Africana Philosophy, then the second paper, in another distribution area, must be on a topic in the philosophy of race (e.g. epistemologies of ignorance, the metaphysics of race, race-based political solidarity, and so forth).  Both papers must be completed by the end of the 6th term in residence.

Students must enroll in either the prospectus tutorial in Philosophy or the Dissertation Prospectus workshop in Black Studies. Students may opt to take both courses. Students are strongly encouraged to form a dissertation committee in the fifth semester. They must complete the dissertation prospectus according to the requirements of either the prospectus tutorial in Philosophy (by the end of the fifth term) or the Dissertation Prospectus in Black Studies (by the end of the sixth term), depending on which course they are enrolled in. Students must present their prospectuses to the Black Studies department during the annual Dissertation Prospectus Symposium.

The dissertation can take the form either of a traditional monograph or, alternatively, a set of three papers.  Further, the dissertation committee will comprise at least three faculty members, at least one of whom will be from the Philosophy Department and at least one of whom will be from the Black Studies Department. The third committee member could come from either Philosophy or Black Studies, but in some cases a third member could come from a different department. A dissertation committee requires three Yale faculty at a minimum, but in some cases may comprise four or five faculty, one or more of whom may come from outside Yale.