A peerless reference guide to the history of Black Studies from one of the discipline's founders

The history of African American studies is often told as a heroic tale, with compelling images of black power and passionate African American students who refused to take no for an answer. Noliwe M. Rooks argues for the recognition of another story, which proves that many of the programs that survived actually began as a result of white philanthropy. With unflinching honesty, Rooks shows that the only way to create a stable future for African American studies is by confronting its complex past.

For hundreds of years, the American public education system has neglected to fully examine, discuss, and acknowledge the vast and rich history of people of African descent who have played a pivotal role in the transformation of the United States. The establishment of Black studies departments and programs represented a major victory for higher education and a vindication of Black scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Nathan Huggins. This emerging field of study sought to address omissions from numerous disciplines and correct the myriad distortions, stereotypes, and myths about persons of African descent. In An Introduction to Black Studies, Eric R. Jackson demonstrates the continuing need for Black studies, also known as African American studies, in university curricula. Jackson connects the growth and impact of Black studies to the broader context of social justice movements, emphasizing the historical and contemporary demand for the discipline. This book features seventeen chapters that focus on the primary eight disciplines of Black studies: history, sociology, psychology, religion, feminism, education, political science, and the arts. Each chapter includes a biographical vignette of an important figure in African American history, such as Frederick Douglass, Louis Armstrong, and Madam C. J. Walker, as well as student learning objectives that provide a starting point for educators. This valuable work speaks to the strength and rigor of scholarship on Blacks and African Americans, its importance to the formal educational process, and its relevance to the United States and the world.

There is an ongoing debate as to whether African American Studies is a discipline, or multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary field. Some scholars assert that African American Studies use a well-defined common approach in examining history, politics, and the family in the same way as scholars in the disciplines of economics, sociology, and political science. Other scholars consider African American Studies multidisciplinary, a field somewhat comparable to the field of education in which scholars employ a variety of disciplinary lenses-be they anthropological, psychological, historical, etc., --to study the African world experience. In this model the boundaries between traditional disciplines are accepted, and researches in African American Studies simply conduct discipline based an analysis of particular topics. Finally, another group of scholars insists that African American Studies is interdisciplinary, an enterprise that generates distinctive analyses by combining perspectives from d

The black power movement helped redefine African Americans' identity and establish a new racial consciousness in the 1960s. Today there are more than a hundred black studies degree programs in the United States. The author explores how this radical social movement evolved into a recognized academic discipline.

Encyclopedia containing a full analysis of the economic, political, sociological, historical, literary, and philosophical issues related to Americans of African descent.

African-American Studies is a unique field of scholarly inquiry and critical interpretation whose intellectual foundation and development have significantly influenced other disciplines in the academy. The African-American Studies Reader is the largest and most comprehensive anthology yet undertaken in the field. A variety of perspectives are used to present the development of the discipline of African-American Studies. This volume's sixty-one articles are organized into eight sections: (I) The Discipline: Definition and Perspectives; (II) African-American Women's Studies; (III) Historical Perspectives; (IV) Philosophical Perspectives; (V) Theoretical Foundation; (VI) Political Perspectives; (VII) Critical Issues and Perspectives; and (VIII) Curriculum Development and Program Models. This comprehensive anthology includes key selections from many scholars who have made substantial contributions to the development of the discipline. They argue many different perspectives and topics relevant to the study of African American Studies as an intellectual, social, and political focus in/of higher education; they provide discussions of the intellectual and academic roots of the field; they describe the conditions that made its emergence possible; they present its theoretical, research, ideological, and philosophical paradigms; and they examine the past, present and future challenges of African-American Studies. The African-American Studies Reader is an invaluable complement to basic books in the discipline and can be used as an introductory text for graduate and undergraduate courses in the field. It provides an essential guide to enable students to understand how the field evolved, therange of perspectives it encompasses, and the challenge and future directions of African-American Studies. This outstanding collection of various perspectives in African-American Studies will be of interest to individuals new to the field as well as those already involved in research, teaching, and other aspects of African-American Studies.