Mission Statement

Africana Studies at Holy Cross is an interdisciplinary inquiry and study of the historical and contemporary intellectual traditions, cultures, social institutions, and political movements of the peoples of Africa and the African Diasporas within the interconnected global system. Africana Studies strives to:

• Promote rigorous and sophisticated exploration of experiences and overlapping intellectual and social traditions of African, African American, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latino peoples.
• Act as a forum for all Holy Cross students, regardless of race or ethnicity, to study together their diverse heritages and common concerns as Americans and citizens of the world.
• Facilitate an understanding of race and face relations historically and within the contemporary world.
• Introduce students to and foster engagement with the art and cultural expression of peoples of African descent.
• Interrogate and conceptualize the complexities of identity formation.

"There is almost no community of intellectual life or point of transference where the thoughts and feelings of one race can come into direct contact and sympathy with the thoughts and feelings of the other."  W.E.B. DuBois, Souls of Black Folk, 1903