New Directions in Africana Studies/Africalogy: Bridging the Gap Between Liberal Arts and Utilitarianism

Africana Studies/Africalogy thrust itself in the late 1960s and early 1970s upon European university campuses in the United States as a direct challenge to European intellectual and cultural hegemony. Its central goal was to transform the intellectual landscape in the European academy by forcing the construction of knowledge in terms that, according to Karenga, were shaped in the human, cultural, and intellectual image and interests of African people. Africans advanced this agenda in light of the fact they were for the first time being admitted to these institutions in substantial numbers “Vital Signs” 73-79 . A key demand made by African students entering into European universities during this time was for an education relevant to their strategic need to discover their place in the world and to fashion a project of study and practice that could be devised to help them address and solve the challenge of ending their subordination in European society and related multidimensional problems they faced as a colonized people Karenga, Introduction 3-31; Karenga, “Black Studies”; Asante, “Afrocentricity”; Asante, “Discourse”; Van Horne; Okafor; Mazama; Baker; Nelson .

___

  • “Vital Signs: The Statistics That Describe the Present and Suggest the Future of African Americans in Higher Education.” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 15 (1997): 73- 79.
  • Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 1988.
  • Asante, Molefi Kete. “A Discourse on Black Studies: Liberating the Study of African People in the Western Academy.” Journal of Black Studies 36.5 (2006): 646-662.
  • ——. “African American Studies: The Future of the Discipline.” Black Scholar 22.3 (1992): 20-29.
  • ——. “Afrocentricity and the Quest for Method.” Africana Studies: A Disciplinary Quest for Both Theory and Method. Ed. James L. Conyers, Jr. Jefferson. NC: McFarland, 1997. 69-90.
  • Baker, Houston A. “Black Studies: A New Story.” Africana Studies: A Disciplinary Quest for Both Theory and Method. Ed. James L. Conyers, Jr. Jefferson. NC: McFarland, 1997. 29-44.
  • Butchart, Ronald E. “‘Outthinking and Outflanking the Owners of the World’: A Historiography of the African American Struggle for Education.” History of Education Quarterly 28.3 (1988): 333-366.
  • Cannon, J. Alfred. “Re-Africanization: The Last Alternative for Black America.” Phylon 38.2 (1977): 203-210.
  • Carruthers, Jacob H. MDW NTR, Divine Speech: A Historiographical Reflection of African Deep Thought from the Time of the Pharaohs to the Present. London: Karnak House, 1995.
  • Du Bois, W. E. B. “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?” The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader. Ed. Eric J. Sundquist. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 423-431.
  • ——. “The Field and Function of the American Negro College.” The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader. Ed. Eric J. Sundquist. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. 409-423.
  • Karenga, Maulana. “Black Studies: A Critical Reassessment.” Dispatches From the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience. Ed. Manning Marable. New York: Columbia UP, 2000. 162-170.
  • ——. Introduction to Black Studies. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: U of Sankore P, 2002.
  • ——. “Towards a Sociology of Maatian Ethics: Literature and Context.” Egypt Revisited. 2nd ed. Ed. Ivan Van Sertima. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1989. 352-395.
  • Magazine Publishers of America. African American Market Profile. New York: Magazine Publishers of America, 2004.
  • Mazama, Ama. “The Afrocentric Paradigm: Contours and Definitions.” Journal of Black Studies 31.4 (2001): 387-405.
  • Nelson, William E. Jr. “Africology: From Social Movement to Academic Discipline.” Contemporary Africana Thought, Theory and Action: A Guide to Africana Studies. Ed. Clenora Hudson-Weems. Trenton, NJ: Africa World P, 2007. 129-143.
  • Okafor, Victor Oguejiofor. Towards an Understanding of Africology. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/ Hunt, 2002.
  • Rabaka, Reiland. “W. E. B. Du Bois’s Evolving Africana Philosophy of Education.” Journal of Black Studies 33.4 (2003): 399-449.
  • Rashid, Kamau. “Slavery of the Mind: Carter G. Woodson and Jacob H. CarruthersIntergenerational Discourse on African Education and Social Change.” Western Journal of Black Studies 29.1 (2005): 542-546.
  • United States. United States Department of Commerce. “Top US Trade Partners: Ranked by 2007 US Total Export Value for Goods (in millions of US dollars).” Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Division. 1-2.
  • Van Horne, Winston A. “Africology: Considerations Concerning a Discipline.” Contemporary Africana Thought, Theory and Action: A Guide to Africana Studies. Ed. Clenora HudsonWeems. Trenton, NJ: Africa World P, 2007. 105-127.
  • Weems, Robert E. Jr. “A Tragic Ambivalence: African American Confusion Regarding Economic Self-Interest.” Contemporary Africana Thought, Theory and Action: A Guide to Africana Studies. Ed. Clenora Hudson-Weems. Trenton, NJ: Africa World P, 2007. 375-390.
  • Woodson, Carter Godwin. The Miseducation of the Negro. New York: AMS P, 1977