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I remember being in graduate school and taking Portia Maultsby's Theorizing Black Music seminar. That course was rich with epiphanies for a budding ethnomusicologist. Two such epiphanies stand out as [...]

Who Hears Here? On Black Music, Pasts & Present, by Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., both synthesizes and attests to a decades-long intellectual project that has set the foundation for a [...]

Working through the two concepts of amaqaba nama gqobhoka, I outline 'ontological derision'. I argue that ontological derision is rooted in intra-Black conflict that leads to interracial conflict, and propose ontological recognition as a resolution to the tensions that exist in the South African political landscape. To reach the postcolonial condition advanced by scholars like Mahmood Mamdani (2021), the modes of life that existed in South Africa prior to colonial imposition need to be recognised as legitimate and worthy of participation in the formation of the public sphere. I argue that recognising this ontology will inform the genuine formation of an inclusive national identity in South Africa. Such a proposal is rooted in the thinking of William Wellington Gqoba, who suggests that the more the two cultures understand each other, the less tensions will exist between them. Keywords: Gqoba, Mqhayi, national culture, ontological derision, ontological recognition, William Wellington Gqoba (1888) and Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi (1914) engage with belonging in South Africa (cf. Kumalo 2023). I am inspired here to deal with whether their thinking can [...]

This study examines the progress of Black Studies at public universities toward incorporation into mainstream higher education following the academic scandal at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2011-2014). Drawing upon data from Black Studies websites at 196 flagship and other predominantly white institutions across the 50 US states, and other sources, findings reveal that (1) the formal identification most frequently found for Black Studies academic units is either 'Africana' or 'African American' Studies; (2) conformity with the original core curriculum model of the National Council for Black Studies across the four levels of the model is uneven; (3) reaching departmental status for Black Studies, as an indicator of incorporation into the mainstream, is highest in the East and lowest in the South; and (4) the strongest predictors of mainstream incorporation are being located in the East and the number of Blacks on an institution's faculty. The need for a national certifying body for Black Studies academic units and other implications of the UNC scandal are discussed., Author(s): Marvin P. Dawkins [sup.1] , Jomills Henry Braddock II [sup.1] , Felecia Theune [sup.1] , Shelby Gilbert [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.26790.3a, 0000 0004 1936 8606, Department of Sociology, [...]

Origins The subject matter of Audre Lorde's poetry is wide-ranging, while her poetry is sometimes deceptively simple. Complexity swaddled in a plain covering, it often contains densely packed, overlaid images [...]

A section of a Special Issue of the Journal of International Women's Studies dedicated to pioneering Black Lesbian Feminist scholar, activist, artist, teacher Angela Bowen, Ph.D. (1936-2018.) The special issue contains sample materials from Bowen's archive, which will be housed at Spelman College, including writings, audio and video of speeches, and photos documenting her career as a dancer, her friendship with and scholarship on Audre Lorde, her activism on Black lesbian and gay issues, and her career in Women's Studies, among other topics. This section focuses on the intersectional and global aspects of Bowen's activism, organizing and scholarship including writing and speeches that range from connecting racial justice issues to LGBT issues to Black lesbians and reproductive rights. This section contains a rare signed early draft of Audre Lorde's poem 'Women on Trains,' dedicated to Bowen and M. Jacqui Alexander. Keywords: Angela Bowen, Audre Lorde, M. Jacqui Alexander, Simon Nkoli, Barbara McDonald, Cynthia Rich, Black feminism, Black lesbians, Black lesbian feminism, archive, Black lesbian archives, queer archives, Black feminist archives, lesbian motherhood, global feminism, transnational feminism, transnational LGBTQ activism, Black queer diaspora, history of women's studies, Nairobi United Nations World Conference on Women, racism in Norway, Ed Bradley, Charles Stuart, Black Nations/Queer Nations?, intersectionality, 'Women on Trains,' reproductive justice movement, Black lesbians and reproductive rights, Womanism, radical feminism, At the 1995 Black Nations/Queer Nations? conference, Bowen asked: 'Is a global political movement among lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people in the African diaspora possible or desirable? My [...]

The budding Department of Black Studies at the University of Rochester is expected to fast-track the hiring of faculty with the help of a S3 million grant from the Mellon [...]

There are aspects of current social justice practice and language that ironically embody anti-black racism. Referring to this irony as social justice racism, the author uses a multidisciplinary Africana Studies perspective to highlight the issue and to introduce a new approach to social justice free of racist contradiction. With reference to examples and insights from history, law, and philosophy, the author argues for a syllogistic understanding of social justice, whereby supporting the Black freedom struggle shakes the foundation of the wealthy-white-male-heteronormative cultural logic behind nearly every other social injustice., '...if the depth of our analysis is like skiing on top and not deep-sea diving, then what we produce in the world is superficial.' (3) This article offers a broadly [...]

Author(s): Judson L. Jeffries [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.261331.4, 0000 0001 2285 7943, Ohio State University, , Columbus, OH, USA Black Studies is the examination of Africana people wherever they [...]

The existential demands of race speak to the necessity of conceptualizing what race is in conjunction with what it means to be human. Both meanings intersect epistemologically and phenomenologically, such that what race is informs what it means to be human as much as what it means to be human informs what race is. In this way, 'blackness' becomes both the concept and the embodiment of what race is and what it means to be human. Theological anthropology presents a framework by which 'what race is' as a concept can be distinguished from 'what it means to be human' as an embodiment. This distinction is calibrated through a theologizing about God from the meaningfulness of 'what it means to be human' beyond 'what race is.' More importantly, this differentiation is respectively between 'what race is' in theory and 'what race is' in praxis as what it means to be human, to the extent that what becomes specifically existential in the meaningfulness of race is translated by what becomes generally existential in the meaningfulness of human embodiment., Author(s): Hue Woodson [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.422791.b, 0000 0000 9563 3898, Tarrant County College, Northwest Campus, , Fort Worth, USA Introduction: What Is Theological Anthropology? By definition, 'theological anthropology'-or [...]

It's never seemed harder--or perhaps more hopeless?--to take up the work of writing for and in the academic world. But of course, we're not the first to feel this, nor [...]

I make my contribution to this symposium on African studies and the challenge of the global in the twenty-first century as a graduate student and scholar from a discipline that [...]

The ongoing integration of area studies into international or global institutes (or schools) in Euro-American universities raises a host of questions for area-studies programs, particularly how best to educate graduate [...]

For the last year or so, I have been preparing to teach a new course on the history of humanitarianism, with a particular emphasis on what I label the ethics [...]

Introduction In this essay, we briefly discuss some of the dominant paradigms in the field of African studies, as well as some of the challenges the field is facing at [...]

At the outset of an edited volume on Intellectuals and African Development, the question is posed about what went wrong. (1) The call for self-reflection perhaps anticipates a further question--about [...]

Africa has always been global. No matter how we define this spatial category--as a mode of connection, or a process of embeddedness within larger frameworks of historical and contemporary relation--Africa [...]

To understand the relation of the birth of the colonial/modern gender system to the birth of global colonial capitalism--with the centrality of the coloniality of power to that system of [...]

My remarks stem from my training, research activities, administration of research activities (organization and management of research networks), and publication of books and journals. I have been involved in these [...]

By way of background, I should say that I am a geographer and have been an area-studies partisan from the moment I entered college. Through my MA, I was interested [...]

Scholarship in the African humanities--art history, cultural anthropology, history, literature, religion, and so forth--has transcended disciplinary ways of knowing, transformed scholarly conversations from a focus on difference between Africa and [...]

The Cosmopolitan Origins of African Studies: Back to the Future? In 1997, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza wrote as president of the African Studies Association that the field of African studies had [...]

Williams, Oscar R. COLONIE Dr. Oscar Renal Williams III, of Albany, passed away on Monday, September 13, 2021. He was born on February 7, 1966, in Winston Salem, N.C. to [...]

This article aims at providing an analysis of African studies as a recently emerging field of study in Turkish academia. For many years, African issues had low priority in both policy and academic circles. The article argues that the recent scholarly interest in African issues is largely a product of the increasing political interest towards the continent. Although the existing literature mostly concentrates on Turkish-African relations and the study of particular African issues remain limited in number, African studies in Turkey has made progress and is still evolving with an expanding and diversifying literature. Keywords: African Studies, Area Studies, International Relations, Turkey. Bu calisma, Turk akademisinde yeni gelismeye baslayan bir alan olan Afrika calismalarinin durumuna iliskin bir degerlendirmede bulunmayi amaclamaktadir. Afrika, uzun yillar boyunca gerek siyasi gerekse akademik alanda en cok ihmal edilen bolgelerin basinda gelmistir. Son zamanlarda Afrika calismalarina yonelik artan akademik ilginin siyasi ilgiyle yakindan alakali oldugunu soyleyebiliriz. Afrika calismalarina iliskin mevcut literatur daha ziyade Turkiye-Afrika iliskilerine odaklanmakta ve belirli Afrika konularina iliskin calismalar sinirli sayida kalmaktadir. Ancak Afrika calismalarinin ilerleme kaydettigini ve literaturun giderek genislemekte ve cesitlenmekte oldugunu gormekteyiz. Anahtar Kelimeler: Afrika Calismalari, Alan Calismalari, Uluslararasi Iliskiler, Turkiye., Introduction The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it argues that there is a strong correlation between political interest and academic studies. Second, it seeks to present this argument [...]

The Indiana University-Bloomington (IUB) African Studies Program convened a symposium titled 'African Studies and the Challenge of the 'Global' in the 21st Century' on April 29, 2016, to consider the [...]

The rise of global international institutes or global studies has been celebrated and decried. For some, global studies represent all the best of the increasing interconnectivity that shapes modern life; [...]

The metaphor of translation as a 'carrying across' of meaning between texts and cultures has often been used to explore the ways in which the West's 'cultural others' present themselves [...]

This study focuses primarily upon the current state of African-centered psychology through the pages of the Journal of Black Psychology (JBP). Recent literature on African-centered psychology is reviewed and articles published in the JBP from 20002010 relative to African-centered psychology are examined. The results of the content analysis of empirical or theoretical articles within the JBP indicated that 90% (n = 221) of the articles were empirical and 10% (n = 25) were theoretical. The results of the content analysis of the schools of thought/ideological orientations within the JBP indicate the following: (1) 30% of the articles (n = 73) were integrationist/assimilationist; 59.0% of the articles (n =146) were African American Nationalist and 11%) of the articles (n = 27) were Pan Africanist/African-centered., Introduction African-centered knowledge production has been extremely influential in the development of authentic and culturally-relevant models of understanding human existence. While a body of scholars attempt to produce African-centered research [...]

How can we marry our thought so that we can now pose the questions whose answers can resolve the plight of the Jobless archipelagoes, the N.H.I. categories, and the environment? [...]

Our society in the Satellites extends to its Earth and Mars emigrants, at the same time it extends instruction on how to conform, the materials with which to destroy themselves [...]

Introduction: Questions Restated I embrace the invitation to participate in the conversation reinvigorated by this special issue of The Black Scholar in a manner encouraged by its editor, Alex Weheliye: [...]

We aspire to be modem, as if this were some how a new position and as if blacks and nonwhites were not already clearly and uncomfortably modem, as if modernity [...]

Given the recent attacks on black and ethnic studies, representing correlatives of the ongoing disqualification of black studies as an intellectual enterprise and the continued disregard for black life in [...]

I wrote this essay to present at the December 2011 Yale University African American Studies: Past, Present, and Future conference organized by Professor Elizabeth Alexander. For years, since joining the [...]

The present study explores what is revealed about the epistemetic characteristics Africana Studies through an analysis of theories in the discipline. Race/ethnic specific theories in Africana Studies are subjected to a reductive analysis to identify the most common qualities they possess. The results indicate that although Africana Studies theories seek to explain a wide range of dimensions of the lives of people of African descent, they have several common characteristics, such as: Recognition of the Necessity of Cultural Specificity, Prioritization of Africana Needs and Interests, Heterogeneous Collectivism, Collective Emancipation and Empowerment, Agency and Self Consciousness, Historical Location, Cultural Situating, Recognizing the Shaping Effects of Oppression and Liberation, and Intersectionality. The present study helps to distinguish the unique approach to knowing in Africana Studies. Moreover, the data may be utilized to guide theory development in the discipline. Keywords African epistemology. Theory. Paradigm, In scientific research, the relationship between the knowing scholar and his or her subject is moderated by epistemology. Epistemology is the philosophy or theory of knowing. An academic discipline's epistemic [...]

The first black prisoners in America were the Africans brought to these shores in chains in 1619. Robert Chrisman, 'Black Prisoners, White Law,' The Black Scholar, Vol. 2, No. 8/9, [...]

Introduction An Associated Press Poll released on the eve of the 2012 presidential election revealed that more Americans are overtly racist today than four years ago. (2) The implicit conclusion [...]

Forty years after emerging from student protest, Black Studies continues to wrestle with its identity. While Black Studies established itself in academia, the racialethnic diversity of faculty began to change and the racialethnic composition of Black Studies departments changed as well. This study uses Mannheim's theory of cohort driven social change to examine how Black Studies faculty members differ in their views of the field. The analyses suggest that differences in professional attitudes are related to demographic trends in the field: much of the disagreement over the field's distinctiveness from other disciplines stems from an older cohort of non-African American professors. Recent cohorts of Black and non-African American Black Studies professors appear to have similar views of the field. We suggest that this may be a response to the political activism that motivated the field at its inception, which may not be a formative experience for recently hired professors. Keywords Black Studies * Faculty attitudes * Cohort analysis * Student activism * Intellectual change, Introduction The Civil Rights Movement sparked many profound changes in American higher education. Following desegregation, enrollments diversified as African American, Latino, and Asian American students sought advanced degrees in larger [...]

C. L. R. JAMES is well known as the author of Black Jacobins, a history of the Haitian revolution, and A History of Pan-African Revolt. He was born in Trinidad [...]

James Turner has been at the center of the modern Black Studies Movement since its emergence in the 1960s, as an extension of the Black Power Movement. Since his days as a student activist at Northwestern University he has remained a consistent voice in the struggle to expand the discipline and re-write scholarship on the people of Africa and the African Diaspora. This detailed oral history interview chronicles the life of the initiator of the term 'Africana Studies' and the founding director of Cornell University's Africana Studies and Research Center. Aside from addressing contemporary debates and interrogating his own writings in this area, the interview also draws parallels between Turner's unique career as a scholar-activist and the experiences of others working in African-American, African Diaspora and Africana Studies. Keywords Black Studies * Africana Studies * Cornell University * James Turner * African Diaspora * Black Power Movement, Preface In the contemporary academic climate, where professors rarely stay in one location beyond a decade and young academics are concerned with maintaining personal websites and attaining publishing agents, James [...]

This commentary serves as a brief response to Bernard Bell's account of the formation of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies--titled 'Passing on the Radical Legacy of Black Studies at the University of Massachusetts'--featured in this same volume. This rejoinder raises critical questions about the fallibility of memory and memoirs by exploring the chasms between self-recollection and history; autobiography and historical investigation; and retrospect and nostalgia. The commentary also offers a rough outline of the important contextual elements shaping the creation of the Du Bois Department and its remarkable early growth in the 1970s, describing it as a notably different intellectual and bureaucratic environment from that which gave birth to the doctoral program in the 1990s. Keywords History * Memory * Self recollection * Nostalgia * Memoir * Autobiography * Black Studies * Afro-American Studies * Africana Studies * W.E.B. Du Bois Department * University of Massachusetts * The Massachusetts Review, Conventional historians differ greatly on the significance and reliability of participant memoirs. To what extent are these to be regarded as finished 'history' and to what extent merely as another [...]