Transformations in Africana Studies: History, Theory, and Epistemology

Description

This book introduces readers to the rich discipline of Africana Studies, reflecting on how it has developed over the last fifty years as an intellectual enterprise for knowledge production about Africa and the African diaspora. The African world has always had a wealth of indigenous knowledge systems, but for the greater part of the scholarly history, hegemonic Western epistemologies have denied the authenticity of African indigenous ways of knowing. The post-colonial era has seen steady and deliberate efforts to expand the frontiers of knowledge about black people and their societies, and to Africanize such bodies of knowledge in all fields of human endeavor. This book reflects on how the multidisciplinary discipline of Africana Studies has transformed and reinvented itself as it has sought to advance knowledge about the African world. The contributors consider the foundations of the discipline, its key theories and methods of knowledge production, and how it interacts with popular culture, Women’s Studies, and other area studies such as Ethnic and Afro-Latinix Studies. Bringing together rich insights from across history, religion, literature, art, sociology, and philosophy, this book will be an important read for students and researchers of Africa and Africana Studies. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Preface and Acknowledgments List of Contributors Introduction: Toward an Africana Epistemology PART 1 Foundations and Development of the Discipline 1 Mission Conscious: On the Foundation, Development, and Problems of the Field of Black Studies 2 Why Africology? A Critical Review of Debates about How to Name the Discipline 3 A Century of Africa-Centered Programs on Black Campuses: Creating a Multimodal Collaborative Africana Studies Digital Project at HBCUs 4 Kwame Nkrumah, Black Activism, and the Emergence and Development of Africana Studies 5 The Local and the Global: Sixty Years of African Studies in Africa 6 Specialization or Interdisciplinarity? African Studies in Africa at a Crossroads PART 2 Theories and Methods of Knowledge Production 7 Rethinking Knowledge Production in Africa: ‘Afrocentric Epistemology’ as an Emancipatory Discourse 8 Toward Africana Queer Theory in Africana Studies: The Case for African Cosmology 9 Colonial History and Documentary Sources: Insights from Southern Nigeria 10 Abina and the Important Men: Using the Graphic History Genre to Teach Africa 11 Afrocentricity and Africana Studies: A Bibliographical Survey PART 3 Gender, Popular Culture, and Literary Spaces 12 Returning, Seeking, and Offering: Sankofa and Black Feminist History, 1979–2019 13 Women’s Studies in Nigeria: A Critical Perspective 14 “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”: Culture, Epistemology, and the Historicity of Black Music 15 Exploring Migration Literature: Identity and Culture in Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon 16 “A Film Is Banned If the Ladies Say So”: Women and Film Censorship in Kenya, 1912–1963 Epilogue: Africana Studies: Looking Back to Confront the Future Bibliography Index