www.wustl.eduJohn Baugh, a noted linguist and education expert, has been appointed the new head of the African and Afro-American Studies department.
Though he was appointed last year, Baugh will arrive in St. Louis later this month. He said he is excited about coming to the University and is looking forward to implementing his vision for the AFAS department, meeting students and getting acquainted with the campus and St. Louis communities.
“Chancellor Wrighton and Vice Chancellor Macias are willing to support my vision for AFAS,” said Baugh. “I’m confident I will have the opportunity to do something different here.”
Baugh plans to solicit the opinions of students, faculty and staff throughout the University in order to make the AFAS program more comprehensive. He noted that the department is strong in the humanities, but there are some weaknesses in social sciences research and scholarship. He hopes to reaffirm the importance of social science research in Africa and among slave descendants, thereby expanding on the traditional mission of African and Afro-American studies.
Students taking AFAS courses are excited about Baugh’s appointment and are looking forward to interacting with him once he arrives on campus.
“Having engaged John Baugh’s work in class, I was pleased to hear that he would be coming here,” said senior Ashley Evans, an AFAS major. “I think his addition to the AFAS program will provide fresh perspectives for students interested in the field.”
Baugh also said he is excited about working and researching in St. Louis and plans to be actively engaged in the local African American community. He will be the inaugural holder of the Margaret Bush Wilson chair in Arts & Sciences. Wilson, a prominent St. Louis civil rights attorney, is currently a trustee emerita at the University. Baugh said it is an extraordinary honor to hold a professorship in Wilson’s name, given what he called her iconic status in the civil rights movement, both at a national and local level.
“There is a historical richness here,” he said. “The symbolism and reality of what St. Louis means to people of black descent makes this an extraordinary research laboratory.”
Much of Baugh’s research focuses on the speech patterns of African Americans. Some of his more recent work has been on identifying the race of speakers during telephone conversations based on the characteristics of their voices. He is also the author of Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice, a key work on the controversy surrounding Ebonics that was published several years ago.
Baugh has spent the past 14 years of his career at Stanford University as a professor of education and linguistics. In addition to his role as director of AFAS and professor of psychology at the University, Baugh will be jointly appointed in the English, anthropology, and education departments.