Program of African Studies

Created in 1948 by Melville J. Herskovits, the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University is the oldest recognized formal program of African Studies in the United States. Today, the Program of African Studies is committed to a decolonized approach to African Studies on many fronts; Structural, epistemic, and relational among others. We commit to creating an academic practice that re-centers Africans, African American and other black communities in the scholarship and knowledge production of and from Africa. We remain committed to this approach as we promote awareness of, study of, research and application of knowledge from and about Africa across interdisciplinary networks of partners and communities of research and learning on the continent as well as across the diaspora. We are further committed to the recovery of, and inclusion of the role that the diaspora and Africans in the diaspora have played in the history of the field, as well as its maintenance, and its future.