Africana Studies is the critical, intellectual, and representational expression of the history, culture, and ideas of people of Africa and the African Diaspora, past and present.

It is an interdisciplinary and transnational program of study that includes theoretical and methodological approaches reflective of the experience and intellectual traditions of people of African descent. It also includes studies of political and social movements such as Negritude, Garveyism, pan-Africanism, the Civil Rights Movement, Decolonization, Black Consciousness, Black Identities and Black Feminism.

Zora Neale Hurston, Franz Fanon, Walter Rodney, CLR James, DuBois, Nkrumah, Patricia Hill Collins, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Ama Ata Aidoo, Buchi Emecheta, Samir Amin and Oyeronke Oyewumi are among the writers and intellectuals studied. Through courses in history, literature, psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, religion and the creative arts, students examine the African world and the relationship between Africana people and the larger world system.