The Graduate Field of Africana Studies at Cornell University established the first Ph.D. program in Africana Studies in New York State in Fall 2013. The Africana Studies Ph.D. program is a small and high quality program designed to expand knowledge production about peoples of African descent and to train future generations of scholars who will deepen and refine the field. An interdisciplinary field of study, Africana Studies embraces the study of people of African ancestry on the African continent and in the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and the broader diaspora. Toward that end, it is at the forefront of scholarship that both transcends disciplinary fields and brings more powerful explanatory value to issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. Accordingly, since its inception, Africana Studies has profoundly shaped research and discourse in the humanities and social sciences by altering traditional epistemologies and methodologies. Africana Studies has historically resisted the confines of national borders in its analyses. The rise of the nation‐state is a recent historical development in world history, and because boundaries and borders are permeable in the transmission of art, dance, music, and literature, scholars do not confine the field spatially or temporally in examining the dynamics of change for peoples of African ancestry. As a result, Africana Studies helps students to appreciate cultural and epistemological diversity, multidimensionality, multiple perspectives, and interconnectivity, which are essential for higher education and its production of knowledge and for the world in the 21st Century.