In addition to the study of specific populations, regions, and territories of Afro-descendant peoples, Africana Studies also encompasses the examination of ideas, religious and cultural practices, cuisine, and artifacts in circulation within and across nation-state and regional boundaries.
The historical and present day contours of black transnationalism can be identified in phenomena ranging from missionary work during the age of colonialism and abolition, to the contemporary diffusion of African-derived worship within Voudun, Rastafari, and Candomblé; from the political affinities that shaped anti-colonial and independence movements, to contemporary migration streams from the Global South to the Global North.
Research Area
Transnational Black Politics
Faculty Representation
Michael Hanchard | John L. Jackson, Jr. | Tukufu Zuberi | Grace Sanders Johnson
Regional Focus
South America, US, Africa, Caribbean
Film, art, music, literature, and theatre are sites within which the complexities of black experience are explored, revisited, and refashioned.
Scholars of Africana Studies have productively engaged with these performative and embodied ways of knowing and of generating knowledge in order to examine the relationship between aesthetics and politics and the myriad ways that the arts actively mediate history and memory, represent contemporary challenges and issues, and innovate future possibilities.
Research Area
Black MusicsFaculty Representation
Timothy Rommen | Herman BeaversRegional Focus
Caribbean, US
Research Area
Film/Cinema/Media StudiesFaculty Representation
John L. Jackson, Jr. | Anthea Butler | Tukufu ZuberiRegional Focus
Caribbean, US, Middle East, Africa, South America
Research Area
Africana LiteraturesFaculty Representation
Herman BeaversRegional Focus
US
Africana Studies scholars trained in Anthropology and Cultural Studies have produced pioneering scholarship in interrogating the distinction between self and other that for years was the key defining feature of the discipline of anthropology.
The legacies of colonialism and racial hierarchy long constituted Afro-descendant and many non-Western populations as other, and the social, political, and often decolonial projects that these communities work to realize in black popular and religious practice are at the center of current research in Africana Studies.
Research Area
EthnographyFaculty Representation
Timothy Rommen | John L. Jackson, Jr.Regional Focus
Caribbean, US, Middle East
Research Area
Cultural GeographyFaculty Representation
Timothy Rommen | Eve Troutt Powell | David AmponsahRegional Focus
Caribbean, North Africa, Africa
Research Area
Black Popular CulturesFaculty Representation
Timothy Rommen | Herman Beavers | Anthea Butler | John L. Jackson, Jr.Regional Focus
Carribean, US
Research Area
ReligionFaculty Representation
Timothy Rommen | Anthea Butler | John L. Jackson, Jr. | Barbara D. Savage | David AmponsahRegional Focus
Caribbean, US, Middle East, Africa
Emergent scholarship in black feminist studies, black queer studies, and critical race theory has underscored how racial identification, anti-black racisms, homophobia, and transphobia have informed the life experiences of black subjects across the continuum of human sexuality, complicating the often binary treatment of gender and racial categories by Western second wave feminists.
Contemporary Africana studies scholarship has been at the forefront of conceptual, theoretical and methodological innovation in exploring the ways that black subjectivities, like all subjectivities, are multiple, intersectional, and contextual.
Research Area
Black Feminist ThoughtFaculty Representation
Grace Sanders Johnson | Dorothy E. RobertsRegional Focus
Caribbean, US
Research Area
Black Queer ThoughtFaculty Representation
Anthea ButlerRegional Focus
US
Research Area
Gender and SexualityFaculty Representation
Herman Beavers | Dorothy E. Roberts | Grace Sanders JohnsonRegional Focus
US, Caribbean
Research Area
Black MasculinitiesFaculty Representation
Herman BeaversRegional Focus
US
One of the underlying commonalities among Afro-descendant populations globally has been their quest for civil rights and social justice under historical conditions of racial slavery, apartheid, and colonial regimes.
Movements for reparations, for curbing or eradicating disproportionate state violence, and for dismantling structures of inequality, to give just three examples, persist into the contemporary moment throughout the black world. Scholars of Africana Studies are particularly well suited to engaging with these historical and contemporary research questions.
Research Area
Critical Race TheoryFaculty Representation
John L. Jackson, Jr. | Dorothy E. Roberts | Michael HanchardRegional Focus
US
Research Area
Race, Science, and HealthFaculty Representation
Dorothy E. Roberts | Tukufu ZuberiRegional Focus
US, Africa
Research Area
Sociology of Race/RacismFaculty Representation
Camille Z. Charles | Dorothy E. Roberts | Tukufu ZuberiRegional Focus
US, Africa, South America
Research Area
EducationFaculty Representation
Camille Z. CharlesRegional Focus
US
Research Area
Economic InequalityFaculty Representation
Camille Z. Charles | Mary Frances BerryRegional Focus
US
Scholars interested in memory and history often utilize critical research methodologies to explore silences in the historiography of Afro-descendant populations. In addition to more conventional historical and archival inquiry, interviews, situated knowledge, and ethno-history serve to expose the chasms between official histories and popular memory.
National-state projects often seek to emphasize national unity at the expense of black memory. Identifying and foregrounding subjects excluded from official historical narratives serves as a counterweight and corrective to official, governmental and elite-based histories.
Research Area
HistoryFaculty Representation
Heather A. Williams | Mary Frances Berry | Grace Sanders Johnson | Eve Troutt Powell | Barbara D. Savage | David Amponsah | Anthea Butler | Michael HanchardRegional Focus
US, Caribbean, North Africa, Africa, South America
Research Area
Oral HistoryFaculty Representation
Grace Sanders Johnson | Timothy Rommen | David Amponsah | Heather A. WilliamsRegional Focus
Caribbean, Africa, US
Research Area
Comparative HistoryFaculty Representation
Michael Hanchard
Regional Focus
South America, Europe, Africa, US
Research Area
Intellectual HistoryFaculty Representation
Barbara D. Savage | Michael Hanchard | Mary Frances BerryRegional Focus
US, Latin America
One of the most powerful perspectives for mapping evidence of social reality and through which to understand social changes has been the careful application of quantitative and qualitative research methods drawn from the social sciences. Such work can be focused, for instance, on the ways that racial statistics can be used to institutionalize inequality or, conversely, provide data for projects promoting social justice.
Scholars working with these tools are often also concerned with how race, gender, class, ethnicity, nationality, and immigrant/citizenship status inform and shape the composition of neighborhoods, universities, or employment prospects. These approaches provide scholars with the ability to develop critical interventions within social statistics and current debates in various parts of the world, and within the social sciences.
Research Area
Qualitative Research MethodsFaculty Representation
Camille Z. Charles | Tukufu Zuberi | Michael HanchardRegional Focus
South America, Caribbean, Africa, Europe, US
Research Area
Quantitative Research MethodsFaculty Representation
Camille Z. Charles | Tukufu ZuberiRegional Focus
South America, Caribbean, Africa, Europe, US
Research Area
Demography/MigrationFaculty Representation
Camille Z. Charles | Tukufu Zuberi | Michael HanchardRegional Focus
South America, Caribbean, Africa, Europe, US
David Amponsah
- Memory and History
- Africana Circuitries and Networks
- Cultural Studies and Anthropolog
- Gender,Sexuality and Difference
- Cultural Studies and Anthropology
- Arts and Performance
- Inequality and Social Justice
- Memory and History
- Gender,Sexuality and Difference
- Cultural Studies and Anthropology
- Africana Circuitries/Networks
- Arts and Performance
- Memory and History
- Inequality and Social Justice
- Social Science Research Methods
- Africana Circuitries/Networks
- Inequality and Social Justice
- Memory and History
- Social Science Research Methods
- Cultural Studies and Anthropology
- Africana Circuitries/Networks
- Inequality and Social Justice
- Arts and Performance
- Gender,Sexuality and Difference
- Memory and History
- Africana Circuitries/Networks
- Cultural Studies and Anthropology
- Memory and History
- Gender,Sexuality and Difference
- Inequality and Social Justice
- Cultural Studies and Anthropology
- Arts and Performance
- Memory and History
- Cultural Studies and Anthropology
- Memory and History
- Africana Circuitries/Networks
- Africana Circuitries/Networks
- Memory and History
- Africana Circuitries/Networks
- Inequality and Social Justice
- Social Science Research Methods