Africana Research & Cultural Renaissance Center
Researching the Past. Restoring Cultural Knowledge. Building the Future.
The Africana Research & Cultural Renaissance Center, known as ARC, advances rigorous, community-engaged research on African and African diasporic histories, cultures, knowledge systems, and heritage. Its work is guided by three core principles: cultural restoration, cultural rectification, and cultural property. ARC recovers cultural knowledge, corrects incomplete or distorted narratives, and examines questions of ownership, appropriation, recognition, and restitution. Through scholarship, student development, public engagement, and digital projects, ARC connects San Diego State University with communities across the African world. The Center brings together scholars, students, and community partners to document, interpret, and share Africana experiences in ways that are academically grounded and publicly accessible.
From the Director
ARC begins with a simple conviction: people of African descent must have a greater role in producing, interpreting, preserving, and protecting knowledge about their own histories and cultures.
We founded the Africana Research & Cultural Renaissance Center to create an enduring research home from that work. Rooted in Africana Studies and guided by an Afrocentric framework, ARC brings scholars, students, and communities together around three connected commitments: cultural restoration, cultural rectification, and cultural property. We recover knowledge that has been obscured, correct narratives that have distorted Africana life, and address questions of ownership, recognition, restitution, and benefit surrounding Africana cultural phenomena.
Through this work, ARC advances Africana knowledge with intellectual rigor, cultural authority, and a clear commitment to students and African and African diasporic communities.
Taharka Adé, Ph.D.
Founding Director
Stay Connected
Africana Research & Cultural Renaissance Center
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182-6032
Location: Arts and Letters (AL) 378
Email: [email protected]
