The main objective is that SIU students spend 2 weeks to understand how America and the African American experience are perceived outside America, specifically in Europe and Germany.

Africana, the global presence of African and African-descended people, discussions of which will bring German colonial history to the fore, will also triangulate Europe, Africa, and America in millennia-old constant contacts that continue in the twenty-first century with enduring implications for all humanity and the human condition.