The mission of the Department of Africology and African American Studies (AAAS) at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan is to provide robust and critical programs of study, research and service on the African world experience--including a particular focus on the life and culture of people of African descent in the Americas. The department pursues its mission by cultivating successive cadres of students imbued with community consciousness and equipped with intellectual tools for shaping the world of the present and the future, community engagement and pertinent careers.

AAAS engages in its study of the African descent population in the United States, the African diaspora, and the African continent itself, using a broad array of interdisciplinary tools. It has touchstones in all branches of human endeavor. The multi-racial and multi-ethnic reality that is the United States and the world today has been shaped by the grand forces of human history, including science, technology, culture, entrepreneurship, environment, politics, literature, art, law, and education. Together with the overarching themes of the human experience--ideas, power, structure, and sustainability--these forces predominate as items of study within the multisubject curriculum of AAAS. …