Africana Studies: Philosophical Perspectives and Theoretical Paradigms » (1st Edition)

The systematic study of the Africana/Black experience emerged in universities in the United States during the late 1960s. As an outgrowth of the Civil Rights and Black Conscious movements, demonstrations occurred on campuses nationwide, giving birth to the new academic discipline.

Written by emerging and established scholars and published in The Western Journal of Black Studies over a span of three decades beginning in 1977, the 27 essays included in Africana Studies provide an evolutionary trajectory of the discipline, including theoretical, ideological, and methodological perspectives and paradigms. The primary focus is the African American experience with emphasis on how theoretical and methodological approaches have changed over time as the discipline matured.

Topics include pre-colonial literacy and scholarship in West Africa, Black Nationalism, intellectual foundations of racism, and the ideology of European dominance. Articles also address African American personality development, gender relationships, self-identity, masculinity, crime, blueprints for economic development, and digitalization of the discipline. This fundamental collection challenges assumptions, misconceptions, and negative stereotypes within the behavioral sciences, social sciences, and liberal arts fields, and portrays the strength, resilience, and diversity of African and African American peoples.

Foreword   Talmadge Anderson     ix
Introduction   Delores P. Aldridge     xi
Study Guide     xv
Philosophical Perspectives on Africana Studies in the 1970s
The University of Sankore at Timbuctoo: A Neglected Achievement in Black Intellectual History   John Henrik Clarke     1
Historical Dialectics of Black Nationalist Movements in America   James E. Turner     8
Toward the Evolution of a Unitary Discipline: Maximizing the Interdisciplinary Concept in African/Afro-American Studies   Karla J. Spurlock     40
An Ideology for Liberation: A Response to Amiri Baraka and other "Marxists"   Betty J. Collier   Louis N. Williams     47
Historical Consciousness and Politics in Africa   Lansine Kaba     58
The Intellectual Foundations of Racism   Chukwuemeka Onwubu     70
The Ideology of European Dominance   Dona Richards     86
Black Studies and Sensibility: Identity, the Foundation for a Pedagogy   Johnnella E. Butler     96
Developing Theoretical Paradigms in Africana Studies in the 1980s
Notes on Africentric Theory of Black Personality   Joseph A. Baldwin     101
Toward a Theory of Popular Health Practices in the Black Community   Clovis E. Semmes     112
Theories of Black Culture   Amuzie Chimezie     124
Toward an Understanding of Black Male/Female Relationships   Delores P. Aldridge     143
Conceptual and Logical Issues in Theory and Research Related to Black Masculinity   Clyde W. Franklin II     154
Race and Raceness: A Theoretical Perspective of the Black American Experience   Jacqueline E. Wade     163
Consensus and Neo-Conservatism in the Black Community: A Theoretical Analysis of Black Leadership   Richard A. Davis     176
The Emerging Paradigm in Black Studies   Terry Kershaw     185
Re-examining the Black on Black Crime Issue: A Theoretical Essay   Robert L. Perry     197
Africana Paradigms in Practice since 1990
Afrocentricity and the Critique of Drama   Molefi Kete Asante     207
Africentricity in Social Science   Gordon D. Morgan     216
Beyond Afrocentricism: Alternatives for African American Studies   Perry A. Hall     232
A Blueprint for African American Economic Development   Robert E. Weems     241
Perception of Power/Control among African Americans: A Developmental Approach   Rudolph A. Cain     249
Towards an Africological Pedagogical Approach to African Civilization   Victor Oguejiofor Okafor     266
Africana Studies in the New Millennium
Towards a Grand Theory of Black Studies: An Attempt to Discern the Dynamics and the Direction of the Discipline   Arthur Lewin     281
Africana Womanism: The Flip Side of a Coin   Clenora Hudson-Weems     293
Africana Studies and Gender Relations in the Twenty First Century   Delores P. Aldridge     308
Will the Revolution Be Digitized? Using Digitized Resources in Undergraduate Africana Studies Courses   James B. Stewart     321
Afterword   E. Lincoln James     337