Students majoring in Africana Studies are required to complete a program consisting of core courses and electives with emphases in the areas of the humanities and behavioral and social sciences. The core courses (30 units) provide students with an appreciation of the historical development and intellectual foundation of the discipline as well as the critical knowledge base, intellectual skills, and methodological techniques essential to the field of Africana Studies. The courses offered in the emphases (9 units each) allow the student to gain a deeper intellectual grasp of the field within one of two important emphases. The two emphases are the Africana Humanities emphasis and the Africana Behavioral and Social Sciences emphasis.

Program Learning Outcomes

• Facilitates student analysis and knowledge of the conceptual approaches and tools of inquiry best suited to explore, explain, describe, and advance the lived experience(s) of Africana peoples;
• Conduct critical, scientific research on issues of relevance to Africana peoples;
• Creatively and critically evaluate issues that Africana-identified people experience in unique and common ways;
• Apply, analyze, and encourage teachers’, students’ and alumni sharing of Africana Studies’ curricular outcomes, knowledge and research with community stakeholders, organizations as well as actively engage in service learning projects;
• Synthesize a core curriculum concerning how people of African descent have demonstrated resilience: consciously shaping and reshaping their environments over time and in the present, while meeting challenges, achieving goals, and resisting oppression;
• Demonstrate and evaluate specialized learning and competencies necessary in professions in which they will encounter people of African descent;
• Analyze the diversities of Black experiences as a window to fully comprehend the American experience, and thus, the human experience.