Bachelor of Arts - Interdisciplinary Programs - Africana Studies

Program Description

The Africana Studies Program at University of Tennessee, Knoxville is committed to producing and disseminating interdisciplinary knowledge about Africa, African Americans, and the African Diaspora around the world.  It promotes creative and critical thinking skills through rigorous research, teaching, service, and publication on the cultures, arts, institutions, histories, political economies, and philosophies of African peoples and peoples of African descent worldwide. Africana Studies is a multicultural, interdisciplinary, and transnational intellectual paradigm that anchors its scholarship on local, national, regional, and global scales. It conceives of the Africana world as extending from Africa to North America, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Asia, and Europe.

The program is rooted in the traditions, history, and agency of the African Americans who were instrumental in the emergence of Africana Studies in the United States. As a discipline, Africana Studies fulfills the changing needs of society and the wider world. It also makes a serious effort toward implementing the objectives of the College of Arts and Sciences and the strategic plans of the University of Tennessee by preparing students for a global world. The central goal of this program is therefore to provide students with a comprehensive interdisciplinary education and critical level of knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the Africana experience in its multiple dimensions.