Introduction to Africana Studies surveys the sum-total of the content of Black peoples’ lives historically and in the present. The course raises and attempts to answer some key questions: What is the nature and historical contours of the Global Black Experience? How have our understandings and appreciations of this experience changed over time? What is “Africa” to (a) Continental Africans? (b) Caribbean/South American Africans? (c) North American Africans and (d) Indian (Asia) Africans—such as the Sidi of Mumbai? The term “Africana” therefore encapsulates the “wide community” of Africa. It offers an openly conceptual framework to attract new and emerging ways of understanding the global Black experience.  

The course therefore explores the interconnectedness of Black subject identities, experiences, issues, themes, as well as topics, and applies them dynamically to diverse locations of the Black world. Specifically, it sheds light on the global approach to the African Diaspora, showing how globalism underscores the distinctive role that Africa and African people have played in their contributions to world affairs. It seeks to demonstrate how Africana people have reclaimed their own “story”, noting that “until lions have their own historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter.”  

Thus, the methodology of this course uses a paradigm which identifies the multiple levels of Black reality over time. The basic facts and perspectives of the course come from the synthesis of three main sources: Africana intellectual tradition, the traditional academic disciplines (particularly the humanities and social sciences), and the Black Studies Movement. The course is also concerned with the development of academic skills. Through lectures, discussions, documentary and feature films, students are guided to learn how to read and interpret the scholarly output of the field of Africana Studies, master key concepts, definitions and terminologies. In addition, students learn to express their understandings and reactions to the subject matter both verbally (oral presentations) and in writing in the mode associated with the discipline of Africana Studies.