History
According to Robert Harris Jr, 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 (African studies). In the second stage the focus turned to black Americans (Afro-American studies). In the third stage a bevy of newly conceived academic programs were established as Black studies.
Unlike the other stages, Black studies grew out of mass rebellions of black college students and faculty in search of a scholarship of change. The fourth stage, the new name "Africana studies" involved a theoretical elaboration of the discipline of black studies according to African cultural reclamation and disparate tenets in the historical and cultural issues of Africanity within a professorial interpretation of the interactions between these fields and college administrations.
Thus Africana studies reflected the mellowing and institutionalization of the black studies movement in the course of its integration into the mainstream academic curriculum. Black studies and Africana studies differ primarily in that Africana studies focuses on Africanity and the historical and cultural issues of Africa and its descendants while Black studies was designed to deal with the uplift and development of the black (African-American)community in relationship to education and its "relevance" to the black community. The adaptation of the term "Africana studies" appears to have derived from the encyclopedia work of W.E.B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson. James Turner, who was recruited from graduate school at Northwestern on the heels of the student rebellions of 1969, first used the term to describe a global approach to Black studies and name the "Africana Studies and Research Center" at Cornell, where he acted as the founding director.
Studia Africana, subtitled "An International Journal of Africana Studies" was published by the Department for African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati in a single issue in 1977 (an unrelated journal called Studia Africana is published by the Centro de Estudios Africanos, Barcelona, since 1990). The International Journal of Africana Studies (ISSN 1056-8689) has been appearing since 1992, published by the National Council for Black Studies.
Read more about this topic: Africana Studies
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