In United States education, Africana studies, or Africology[1] is the study of the histories, politics and cultures of peoples of African origin both in Africa and in the African diaspora. It is thus the sum of the fields of African studies and African diaspora studies (Afro-Latin American and Black Studies programs narrowly conceived as African American studies). Not that there is no value in specific studies, any more than English literature or American history have no value apart from European or world history.
Africana Studies departments at many major universities grew out of the "Black Studies" programs and departments formed in the late 1960s as black studies programs were reformed and renamed "Africana studies" with an aim to encompass the continent of Africa and all of the African diaspora in a more abstract and traditionally academic way. Africana studies programs also struggled to better align themselves with other college and university departments finding continuity and compromise between the radicalism of past decades and the multicultural scholarship found in many fields today. Thus it is a scholarship of compromise and acquiescence while black studies was motivated by the need for a scholarship of change. [2][3]
- ↑ Africology and You University of Milwaukee
- ↑ Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies By Delores P. Aldridge, Carlene Young. Lexington Books 2000. ISBN 0-7391-0547-7
- ↑ The Intellectual and Institutional Development of Africana Studies by Robert l. Harris Jr. from The Black Studies Reader By Jacqueline Bobo, Cynthia Hudley, Claudine Michel Page 15 ISBN 0-415-94554-2