Academics
DAFS major and minor course sequences are structured to provide a grounded familiarity with topics of history, language, philosophy, education, literature, art, music, science, cultural anthropology, and sociology as they relate to peoples of African descent throughout the world.
The AFS curriculum includes courses which cover a broad spectrum of the Pan-African experience. The curriculum seeks also to investigate African connections and influences among and with other ethnic groups in the United States and other parts of the Americas, whether Native North Americans and Latino communities in the U.S., or communities in Brazil, Haiti, etc. Study in the Department of Africana Studies is preparation for a global future with a cultivated understanding of local conditions and challenges. The Department is also a site of lively and empathetic engagement over issues of gender, pressures of LGBT identity in black communities, and other problems and opportunities facing young black men and women in the 21st century.