The Center for Africana Studies pursues broad inquiry into the ideas and experiences of African peoples throughout the world. Its interdisciplinary approach is organized around three major sub-fields: studies in Africa and the African diaspora, African-American studies, and urban studies.
The Center's work spans diverse academic disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and public health. While its sub-fields possess distinct and distinctive intellectual traditions, they offer exciting possibilities for comparative as well as integrative inquiry.
Through research, coursework, and public programs, the Center seeks to promote fundamental examination and understanding of the commonalities and contrasts among the historical and contemporary experiences of Africans and African Americans, and of the place of African diasporas in both local and global contexts. The Center strives to understand the movement of black peoples from their ancestral homelands to a variety of host lands, as well as expand upon Black Studies research to raise new inquiries into all aspects of African-American experiences, all the while building upon existing Krieger School strengths in the study of Africa.
The Center offers an undergraduate major and minor and provides teaching and research opportunities for graduate students. With an executive board of 10 actively engaged faculty members and a longer list of affiliated faculty, the Center has infused the campus with new intellectual vitality by sponsoring various speaker series, symposia, seminars, and student and faculty discussions, and it has added tremendous breadth and depth to the curriculum in areas that are Africana-related. The Center offers undergraduate courses covering issues in anthropology; English, history; history of art; Latin American studies; political science; public health; music; sociology; and women, gender, and sexuality studies.