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Pensée 2: The “African” in Africana/Black/African and African American Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Carolyn Somerville*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Hunter College, New York, N.Y.; e-mail: [email protected]

Extract

In Pensée 1, “Africa on My Mind,” Mervat Hatem questions the perceived wisdom of creating the African Studies Association (focused on sub-Saharan Africa) and the Middle East Studies Association a decade later, which “institutionalized the political bifurcation of the African continent into two academic fields.” The cleaving of Africa into separate and distinct parts—a North Africa/Middle East and a sub-Saharan Africa—rendered a great disservice to all Africans: it has fractured dialogue, research, and policy while preventing students and scholars of Africa from articulating a coherent understanding of the continent.

Type
Quick Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

NOTES

1 “Academics,” University of Pennsylvania Center for Africana Studies, http://www.sas.upenn.edu/africana/academics.html (accessed 17 February 2009).

2 Bowman, Larry W. and Cohen, Diana T., “Identifying New Directions for African Studies: The National Survey of African Studies Faculty,” African Issues 30 (2002): 210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.