African American Studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of Black Americans. Taken broadly, the field studies not only the cultures of people of African descent in the United States, but the cultures of the entire African diaspora. The field includes scholars of African American literature, history, politics, religion and religious studies, sociology, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences.
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 twentieth century were Carter G. Woodson, Herbert Aptheker, Melville Herskovits, and Lorenzo Dow Turner.
Programs and departments of African American studies 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. 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-months strike in the spring of 1969. The creation of programs and departments in Black studies was a common demand of protests and sit-ins by minority students and their allies, who felt that their cultures and interests were underserved by the traditional academic structures.
Black studies is a systematic way of studying black people in the world – such as their history, culture, sociology, and religion. It is a study of the black experience and the effect of society on them and their effect within society. This study can serve to eradicate many racial stereotypes. Black Studies implements: history, family structure, social and economic pressures, stereotypes, and gender relationships.
Read more about African American Studies: Recent Trends: Emergence of Black Male Studies (BMS), Universities and Colleges With African American Studies Departments, Universities With Ph.D. Programs in African American Studies, Scholars in African American Studies, Scholarly and Academic Journals
Famous quotes containing the words african american, african, american and/or studies:
“I never feel so conscious of my race as I do when I stand before a class of twenty-five young men and women eager to learn about what it is to be black in America.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American college professor. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B3 (July 27, 1994)
“The writer in me can look as far as an African-American woman and stop. Often that writer looks through the African-American woman. Race is a layer of being, but not a culmination.”
—Thylias Moss, African American poet. As quoted in the Wall Street Journal (May 12, 1994)
“Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
—Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)
“The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)