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Title VI and African Studies: Prospects in a Poly centric Academic Landscape

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2016

James C. McCann
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Extract

In 1996, the Ford Foundation and the African Studies Association published African Studies in the United States: A Perspective by Jane Guyer, a noted economic anthropologist and then-program director at Northwestern University. In that commissioned volume, Guyer outlined, as she saw them, three distinct eras of African studies in the United States. She also collected and analyzed data about the production of knowledge concerning Africa, specifically numbers of doctorates in key disciplines, linkages to African institutions, and intellectual trends in scholarship. The data and perspectives she presented reflected the situation in African studies in the first half of the 1990s and sought to endorse the Ford Foundation funding initiative “Strengthening African Studies.” The purpose of this article is to revisit the question almost a decade later and in particular to reflect upon the specific role of federally funded area studies programs (i.e., Title VI) in the study of Africa.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , 2002 , pp. 30 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2002 

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References

Notes

1. Guyer, Jane, African Studies in the United States: A Perspective (Atlanta: ASA Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

2. The Ford Foundation initiative provided grants to a select group of programs to pursue innovative new directions for African area studies. Of 19 applicants, 12 received initial grants of $50,000, some of which expanded in a second round.

3. Guyer, 1, 10.

4. One exception may have been Booker T. Washington’s pioneer research at Tuskegee, which implemented a development project in colonial Dahomey, now Benin. See Edward Erhagbe, “African-Americans’ Ideas and Contributions to Africa, 1900-1985: From ‘Idealistic Rhetoric’ to ‘Realistic Pragmatism’” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1992).

5. Hill, Adelaide Cromwell, “African Studies Programs in the United States,” in McKay, Vernon, ed., Africa in the United States (New York, US: Macfadden-Bartell, 1967), 65-88Google Scholar.

6. Point Four based part of its efforts on setting up partner relationships between U.S. and foreign institutions. In Africa, one such case was the joint program between Oklahoma A&M (i.e., Oklahoma State) and Ethiopia’s Alemaya Agricultural College. This relationship later became a model for partnerships such as Michigan State-Nsukka and others.

7. See U.S. Department of State, Area Studies Programs in American Universities, Washington, 1956, quoted in Hill, “African Studies,” 77. It is not clear which three programs the list included, but its designation of “area studies” may have excluded Roosevelt, Lincoln, and possibly UCLA.

8. Each program eventually moved to Title VI funding, building programs in African languages and outreach in the late 1970s. By the mid-1980s, Northwestern had lost its Title VI grant and decided to rely on other support, abandoning its African language program and outreach mandate. Boston University has maintained those aspects, as well as its place within Title VI networks.

9. For institutions such as Stanford, Yale, and Boston University, awarding each FLAS fellowship cost the institution more than $15,000.

10. Northwestern lost its status in 1983 and never reapplied. Yale lost its status in 1983 but has applied and been funded again. Boston University lost its status in 1999 and will reapply. Howard lost its status in 1996 and never reapplied. This pattern also seems to hold true for other Title VI world areas, a few well-endowed schools (Chicago, Yale, and Stanford) being exceptions.

11. In the mid-1990s, a special program encouraged applications from HBCUs, and a number of consortia emerged (Tuskegee and Lincoln, Central State and Ohio State, Howard). But these centers lost their funding again in the next competitive cycle.

12. See Brokenshaw, David, “African Studies in the United States,” African Studies Bulletin 9, no. 1 (1966): 38-80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Examples of this generation include Joe Miller, dean at the University of Virginia; Paul Lovejoy, vice president at York University in Toronto, Canada; Allen Isaacman, director of the MacArthur Program at the University of Minnesota; and Charles Ambler, associate provost at Texas-El Paso. Many others, of course, are prominent in ASA and as senior faculty at African studies programs around the country.

14. Guyer, African Studies, 32-34. The data cited here make the assumption that students with African surnames have African nationality or are first-generation citizens or permanent residents.

15. Not all doctoral students in these summer institutes were from non-Title VI institutions, but many came from universities where they worked with faculty advisers with little or no exposure to African research topics and issues.