Join the Academic Accelerator for a BA in Anthropology at American University. Gain credits, cultural insights, and support for international students. Apply now!
The Academic Accelerator Program (AAP) may be completed in as few as two semesters and is designed specifically for students who are ready to succeed in immersive English-speaking classrooms. The Academic Accelerator program gives students a firsthand, practical, and cultural understanding of the American University campus and the Washington, DC, area through its contextual curriculum. They may enter the program in the spring or fall and progress into year two of their undergraduate education with up to a full year’s worth of academic credits. Depending on their intended degree, they may choose their elective curriculum in social sciences, humanities, or the sciences. In Academic Accelerator - Bachelor of Arts - Anthropology of the Department of Anthropology at American University, the collective mission is to do public anthropology in the service of social justice. The faculty and students work against racism, sexism, environmental degradation, speciesism, social discriminations, class oppression, forced community displacements, and much else. These are terrifying and outraging times in the United States and around the globe. White supremacy, genocidal state violence, ethnic hatred, and the COVID-19 pandemic, ravage African American Communities resulting in people, such as George Floyd and Freddie Gray, being killed. These are also terrible times for Asian American and Pacific Islander communities as racist and ethno-animosity-driven violence and destruction plague their lives. In this department, there is strong support for recent racial justice statements issued by many professional anthropology associations, including this statement from the Association of Black Anthropologists. The students and faculty understand that African American, AAPI, Native and Indigenous American, LGBTQ+, and many other communities are brutalized by violence, terror, pain, and demise and that resistance to and defiance of these horrors is essential. You will also find among us students and faculty who helps understand the historical depth and roots of today’s genocidal crises and systemic white supremacy as well as various modes of resistance to them across the centuries.
