Building intellectual bridges: from African studies and African American studies to Africana studies in the United States

Abstract

The study of Africa and its peoples in the United States has a complex history. It has involved the study of both an external and internal other, of social realities in Africa and the condition of people of African descent in the United States. This paper traces and examines the complex intellectual, institutional, and ideological histories and intersections of African studies and African American studies. It argues that the two fields were founded by African American scholar activists as part of a Pan-African project before their divergence in the historically white universities after World War II in the maelstrom of decolonization in Africa and civil rights struggles in the United States. However, from the late 1980s and 1990s, the two elds began to converge, a process captured in the development of what has been called Africana studies. The factors behind this are attributed to both demographic shifts in American society and the academy including increased African migrations in general and of African academics in particular fleeing structural adjustment programs that devastated African universities, as well as the emergence of new scholarly paradigms especially the field of diaspora studies. The paper concludes with an examination of the likely impact of the Obama era on Africana studies. Key words: African studies, African American studies, African diaspora studies, Africana studies

The Caliphate, the Black Writer, and a World in Revolution, 1957–69

“…DuBois, and discredited their scholarship. 60 Recognizing these dynamics, and the overwhelmingly white make-up of the US-based African Studies Association (ASA), in the Fall of 1968 at the ASA's Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, a group of scholars named the Black Caucus would call upon the ASA to change its racial politics. 61 55 It's unclear whether Brown took part in the Black Caucus' protest, or whether he was a member of the ASA altogether.…”

“…Diakité and B. Sanankoua, Bamako, Fleur des Savanes (la ville hier et aujourd'hui)(Bamako, 1987), 32. 15 On Soviet investment in infrastructure projects in West Africa, see A. Iandolo, Arrested Development: The Soviet Union inGhana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955-1968 (Ithaca, NY, 2022.16 Construction was completed in 1965-6. M. Elshahed, 'A hotel in Mali: Egypt's flirtation with architecture as foreign policy', Cairo Observer, 11 Dec. 2014, https://cairobserver.com/post/104880644219/a-hotel-in-mali-egypts-flirtation-with#.…”

Teaching and Researching Africa in an ‘Engaged’ Way: The Possibilities and Limitations of ‘Community Engagement’

“…1, 2010 6 anthropologist Melville Herskovits. Yet others seem to consider African Studies (and Area Studies as a whole) as a post-Second World War phenomenon (see Keller 1998;Uchendu 1977;Wallerstein 1995;Zeleza 1997;Zeleza 2006b). Another set of disputes relates to the way in which African Studies has been conducted and about who should conduct African Studies.…”