WHAT IS AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES?
In spite of the fact that African American Studies as an academic field of study has been taught in institutions of higher learning for close to half a century in this country, the question is still asked, What is African American Studies?

Interdisciplinarity
It is important to emphasize from the outset that African American Studies is NOT simply African American history--African American history is only one component of it. Having said this, one must also note that African American Studies has as many definitions as the number of people willing to define it. However, from the perspective of the Department of African American Studies at this university African American Studies is defined as an interdisciplinary field of study that considers as its subject matter anything and everything concerning the experiences of people in Africa, and the African Diaspora--in relation to themselves, as well as to others--from whatever disciplinary perspective(s) one cares to examine these experiences: history, law, politics, culture, literature, economics, education, the environment, science, medicine, music, religion; and so on.

Intellectual Insurgency
Given its historical origins, African American Studies (like other similar fields, Native American Studies, Asian American Studies, Latina/Latino Studies, etc.) is by definition an insurgent field that seeks to challenge "whiteness" as the dominant narrative of all aspects of U.S. society and the world: from epistemology to the educational curriculum, from civil society to democracy, from culture to political economy, from domestic local/national politics to international relations, and so on. Consequently, no matter how African American Studies is defined, it cannot escape from including prominently on its agenda the academic study/research of such matters as civil rights, human rights, social justice, colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism, classism, etc. Subtextually, then, African American Studies does not, will not, and cannot seek to legitimate "blackness" as a mirror reflection of "whiteness," but rather the complete transformation, root and branch, of how one defines democracy and civilization (in this sense, African American Studies as a field of study will always remain a work in progress). Consider: there is absolutely nothing in the lives and work of such luminaries as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Ralph Bunche, Charles Hamilton Huston, Thurgood Marshall, Walter White, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, Jr., Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, etc. that contradicts this statement.

Political Economy
It should also be noted that the insurgency of the field, as is true of such other insurgent fields as Native American Studies and Women's Studies, additionally, mandates an activist subtext to all its endeavors. Therefore, in this specific instance, the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone is considered a luxury that the field can ill afford. Although in recent years (at least for about two decades now) the field of African American Studies has been overwhelmed by a preponderance of perspectives derived from cultural studies much beloved by navel-gazing bourgeois liberals of all hues ensconced in ivory towers, the department seeks to re-emphasize the fundamental roots of all struggles of the masses everywhere: how to put bread on the table and have a roof over one's head; that is, at the heart of all struggles that are colored by race, class, gender, ethnicity, etc. are issues of political economy and NOT simply ideology (especially when the latter is framed in terms of "identity politics"). (The Atlantic Slave Trade, for example, was not about cultural differences, it was about political economy--specifically the limitless accumulation of wealth through super-exploitation of the labor of Africans and the lands of Native Americans under the aegis of European-dominated global capitalism.) In other words, while the study of ideology (broadly understood as the basis of all cultural studies) has its place, it cannot be the be-all and end-all of African American Studies. After all, in the final analysis, ideology is nothing more than a mere facade.

Internationality
It must be reemphasized here that African American Studies, as hinted above, places great stress on the study of interrelations between, on one hand, Africa and the African Diaspora, and on the other, between Africa/African Diaspora and other peoples throughout the world, and throughout history from antiquity to the present. Consider this, for example, with reference to the latter: Is it at all possible to study the history of Europe or the history of the Americas without, at the one and the same time, studying the history of Africa? Therefore, just as African American Studies is not simply African American history, it is also NOT ethnic studies! From the perspective of this department, those who make up the African Diaspora include people of African ancestry in the U.S. (African Americans); in Canada (Afro-Canadians); in the Caribbean (Afro-Caribbeans); in Latin America (Afro-Latinos); in Europe (Afro-Europeans), in Asia (Afro-Asians), and so on. Given, then, that African American Studies is concerned with the experiences of all peoples of African ancestry, where ever they may have lived in the past, or where ever they may be living today, it should be noted that this field is also sometimes referred to as Africana Studies.

Contributions
At the same time, African American Studies seeks to bring to the center of attention the political, economic, social, and cultural contributions of Africans Americans to the evolution of United States as we know it today--from whatever perspective one cares to look at it. From the various amendments to the U.S. Constitution and major decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court to the development of U.S. agro and industrial capitalism; from the struggles for human and civil rights of all peoples of color and all women to culture (language, religion, food, music, sport and entertainment, etc.), the presence of African American contributions loom determinatively large.


 
 
 
 
 


 
 
 

ygml/2006