Black studies, or Africana studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field that primarily focuses on the study of the history, culture, and politics of the peoples of the Black African diaspora and Africa. The field includes scholars of African-American, Afro-Canadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, Afro-European, Afro-Asian, African Australian, and African literature, history, politics, and religion as well as scholars from disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. The field also u
Black studies, or Africana studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field that primarily focuses on the study of the history, culture, and politics of the peoples of the Black African diaspora and Africa. The field includes scholars of African-American, Afro-Canadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, Afro-European, Afro-Asian, African Australian, and African literature, history, politics, and religion as well as scholars from disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. The field also u
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Black studies, or Africana studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field that primarily focuses on the study of the history, culture, and politics of the peoples of the Black African diaspora and Africa. The field includes scholars of African-American, Afro-Canadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, Afro-European, Afro-Asian, African Australian, and African literature, history, politics, and religion as well as scholars from disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. The field also uses various types of research methods.
Intensive academic efforts to reconstruct African-American history began in the late 19th century (W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-trade to the United States of America, 1896). Among the pioneers in the first half of the 20th century were Carter G. Woodson, Herbert Aptheker, Melville Herskovits, and Lorenzo Dow Turner.
Programs and departments of Black studies in the United States were first created in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of inter-ethnic student and faculty activism at many universities, sparked by a five-month strike for Black studies at San Francisco State University. In February 1968, San Francisco State hired sociologist Nathan Hare to coordinate the first Black studies program and write a proposal for the first Department of Black Studies; the department was created in September 1968 and gained official status at the end of the five-month strike in the spring of 1969. Hare's views reflected those of the Black power movement, and he believed that the department should empower Black students. The creation of programs and departments in Black studies was a common demand of protests and sit-ins by Black students and their allies, who felt that their cultures, history, and interests were diminished and neglected by the traditional academic structures in the previous 200 years of higher education.
Black studies departments, programs, and courses were also created in the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.
Nomenclature
The academic discipline is known by various names. In 2009, Ama Mazama expounded:
In the appendix to their recently published Handbook of Black Studies, Asante and Karenga note that "the naming of the discipline" remains "unsettled" (Asante & Karenga, 2006, p. 421). This remark came as a result of an extensive survey of existing Black Studies programs, which led to the editors identifying a multiplicity of names for the discipline: Africana Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, African/Black World Studies, Pan-African Studies, Africology, African and New World Studies, African Studies–Major, Black World Studies, Latin American Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Black and Hispanic Studies, Africana and Latin American Studies, African and African-American Studies, Black and Hispanic Studies, African American Studies, Afro-American Studies, African American Education Program, Afro-Ethnic Studies, American Ethnic Studies, American Studies–African-American Emphasis, Black Studies, Comparative American Cultures, Ethnic Studies Programs, Race and Ethnic Studies.
Canada
In 1991, the national chair for Black Canadian Studies, which was named after James Robinson Johnston, was created at Dalhousie University for the purpose of advancing the development and presence of Black studies in Canada. Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin was studied by the Black Canadian Studies chairman, John Barnstead.
Mexico
Through development of the publication, The black population in Mexico (1946), Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán made way for the development of Afro-Mexican studies.
United States
A specific aim and objective of this interdisciplinary field of study is to help students broaden their knowledge of the worldwide human experience by presenting an aspect of that experience—the Black Experience—which has traditionally been neglected or distorted by educational institutions. Additionally, this course of study strives to introduce an Afro-centric perspective, including phenomena related to the culture.
According to Robert Harris Jr, an emeritus professor of history at the Africana Studies Research Center at Cornell, there have been four stages in the development of Africana studies: from the 1890s until the Second World War, numerous organizations developed to analyze the culture and history of African peoples. In the second stage, the focus turned to African Americans. In the third stage, a bevy of newly conceived academic programs were established as Black studies.
In the United States, the 1960s is rightfully known as the "Turbulent Sixties." During this time period, the nation experienced great social unrest, as residents challenged the social order in radical ways. Many movements took place in the United States during this time period, including women's rights movement, labor rights movement, and the civil rights movement.
What appears to drive these distinctive names is a combination of factors: the composite expertise of their faculty, their faculty's areas of specialization, and the worldviews of the faculty that make up each unit. By worldview, I am referring to the question of whether the constituent faculty in a given setting manifests any or a combination of the following visions of our project:
a domestic vision of black studies that sees it as focusing exclusively on the affairs of only United States African Americans who descended from the generation of enslaved Africans
a diasporic vision of black studies that is inclusive of the affairs of all of African descendants in the New World—that is, the Americas: North America, South America and the Caribbean
a globalistic vision of the black studies—that is, a viewpoint that thinks in terms of an African world—a world encompassing African-origin communities that are scattered across the globe and the continent of Africa itself.
