"Associate Professor - Ph.D. and M.A. in Black, Race & Ethnic Studies - 2 Positions"

The CUNY Graduate Center invites applications for two tenured or tenure-track faculty positions at the rank of Associate Professor, with an anticipated start date of Fall 2026. The primary appointment will be with the new discipline: Ph.D. and M.A. programs in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies, with a secondary appointment—if desired—in a traditional academic discipline. Both positions will be part of a Mellon Foundation-funded faculty cluster hire in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies at CUNY.

We seek scholars with strong records of research, funding, teaching, advising, mentoring and a commitment to public outreach. The area of specialization is fully open, but we are especially interested in scholars who will be able to contribute to both the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary orientation of the newly established Ph.D. Program in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies. Nominally, such specialization might be delineated as follows:

• Race, gender, sexuality, and intersectionality
• The political economy of race and/or racial capitalism
• State, Power, Politics, Networks, and Institutions
• Race, diasporas, and transnationalism
• Social movements, rights, and social justice
• Indigeneity, dispossession, colonial formations and decolonial studies
• Theory, Humanistic Knowledge and the Social Sciences
• Race, representations and cultural studies
• Epistemologies, knowledge production and political thought
• Art, Aesthetics, and Humanities
• Histories of Difference and Cultural Formations

The Program in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies seeks to offer both innovative and substantive approaches to the study of race and racial formations, the comparative examination of global blackness and the study of ethnicity and ethnic formations on a planetary scale. Launched in 2025, this new Ph.D. Program—conceived with the twenty-first century university and student in mind—brings a dynamic faculty together trained both in traditional disciplines (Anthropology, English, History, Sociology) and scholars whose intellectual formation originated in interdisciplinarity. As scholars addressing themselves to societal concerns from the vantage point of the humanities and the social sciences, the faculty are equally committed to pedagogy and the training of pioneering thinkers and actors. The commitment to bold interdisciplinary and intersectional analysis offering explanations and solutions to pressing societal concerns, situates the Program in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies in constant dialogue with various publics.

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) is the focal point for advanced teaching and research at CUNY, the nation's largest urban public university. With over 35 doctoral and master's programs of the highest caliber, the Graduate Center fosters pioneering research and scholarship in the arts and sciences and prepares students for careers in universities and the private, nonprofit, and government sectors. The Graduate Center's commitment to research and scholarship for the public good is exemplified by its more than 30 centers, institutes, and initiatives, including its Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC), a 200,000 square-foot facility in upper Manhattan, designed to promote collaboration among scientists in five areas of global research and innovation: nanoscience, photonics, structural biology, neuroscience, and environmental sciences.

The Ph.D. Program in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies (BRES) is an innovative multidisciplinary graduate program offering a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) and a Master of Arts (M.A.) degree in Black, Race & Ethnic Studies—the first graduate program of its kind in the New York Metropolitan Area. The BRES Ph.D. Program trains students in both humanities- and social science-based frameworks oriented around questions of race and ethnic studies. It builds on the existing strengths in our Ph.D. Programs in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Graduate Center, convening faculty with shared interest in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies from 25 CUNY campuses and infusing the community with intellectual energy and resources for collaborations. It establishes CUNY as a leader in both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary scholarship of race, black and ethnic studies in the region, country and world.

Our 60-credit ‘discipline-plus one’ Ph.D. Program in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies combines the strengths of a Ph.D. in a traditional discipline with both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research and training in Race, Black and Ethnic studies. Our Ph.D. students complete the requirements of a ‘discipline’ of their choice acquiring competence in disciplinary tradition (Anthropology, Art History, Political Science, or Psychology) while immersing themselves in both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary training that is foundational to the study of racial formations, Black and Ethnic Studies. We aim to train the next generation of academic leaders whose research will place them at the frontiers of knowledge creation and discovery in this important field of study. Our 30-credit M.A. Program in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies trains the next generation of professionals whose expertise in BRES will allow them to effectively serve their diverse and multiethnic constituencies in academic, private, public and non-profit settings, with an emphasis on multidisciplinary research, education, collaboration, social and racial justice, and praxis.

Ph.D. degree in area(s) of experience or equivalent. Also required are the ability to teach successfully, demonstrated scholarship or achievement, and ability to cooperate with others for the good of the institution. The Ph.D. degree may be in any of the Humanities or Social Sciences Disciplines or related interdisciplinary program. Since the appointments are for two tenured Associate Professors expectations are that successful candidates have moved substantially beyond the dissertation project, having published a well-received first book(s) or the disciplinary-specific equivalent.