Prof. Stephen Small has taught in the Department of African American Studies since 1994. He received his B.A. (honours) in Economics and Sociology from the University of Kent at Canterbury, his MS.C in Social Sciences, from the University of Bristol (both in the UK), and his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. He taught in the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1988-1992); in the Center for Research in Ethnic Relations at the University of Warwick (1991); and in the Department of Sociology at the University of Leicester (1992-1995). He was Study Center Director of the University of California’s Education Abroad Program in France (Bordeaux and Toulouse), 2002-2004; and he was Director of UC, Berkeley’s travel study program in Brazil (Salvador and Rio de Janeiro) from 2001-2005.

The bulk of his teaching is about African Americans in the post Civil Rights period, but he makes necessary comparisons with earlier periods, and with other racial and ethnic groups in the contemporary period. He frequently finds it useful to analyze the structure and institutional circumstances of African Americans, by making systematic reference to the circumstances of Blacks elsewhere in the Diaspora – especially in the Caribbean, Europe and in South America (especially Brazil). His undergraduate courses include Race, Class and Gender in African American Communities, Black Families in the USA, Globalization and Minority American Communities, and Theories of Race and Ethnicity.