New African Studies Centers: A UCLA/Hew Pilot Program

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (02) ◽  
pp. 223-225
Author(s):  
John F. Povey
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
University Of California ◽  
African Studies ◽  
National Defense ◽  
New Faculty ◽  
National Defense Education Act ◽  
Department Of Health ◽  
Education Act ◽  
The University ◽  
Considerable Discussion

There has been considerable discussion recently in recognition of the need to develop African studies in this country on a far wider basis than at present, where it is concentrated too narrowly in a few major centers of great academic strength. Such discussion has been exacerbated by the demands of Afro-Americans whose concern for African studies is not less significant for the debatable academic basis upon which it is posited. The problem with all previous programs to inaugurate new African programs has been that they focused totally upon the training of faculty. There have been a series of summer courses, many of which have in themselves been of high quality and substantially imaginative. Yet they did little to innovate new programs on the campus, owing to the sluggishness of the administrative machinery or the relative indifference to the new faculty interest. The program which the African Studies Center at the University of California at Los Angeles planned for the summers of 1968 and 1969 attempted to remedy this deficiency. The project was financed by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare under National Defense Education Act funds and was organized and administered by Michael F. Lofchie and John F. Povey, themselves joint assistant directors of the UCLA African Studies Center.

The National Defense Education Act and African Studies

1964 ◽  
Vol 7 (03) ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Lyman H. Legters
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Instructional Program ◽  
African Studies ◽  
National Defense ◽  
World Region ◽  
National Defense Education Act ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Education Act

African studies in the United States were still in their infancy in 1958 when the National Defense Education Act was passed. One instructional program -- at Hartford Seminary -- had a long history. And numbers of anthropologists were notably active in field research on African topics by that date. But as compared with the venerable tradition of oriental studies, or even with pre-World War II area instruction and research on Latin America, the African field was only just opening up as a subject of concerted academic attention. At the same time, it was clear that the postwar burgeoning of area studies programs had as much relevance to Africa as to Russia or India, and a few programs -- notably those at Northwestern and Boston -- had by this time displayed a serious intention of developing offerings of a scope comparable to those of the older fields. Indeed, the area approach had special pertinence for African studies, for with the exception of anthropology virtually none of the conventional departments inmost institutions included African specialists. The area approach was not an alternative to disciplinary modes of university organization, but rather a means of both focusing and reinforcing disciplinary competence with reference to a particular world region. The device helped to strengthen departments by reminding them of neglected fields and opportunities, and its corollary of multi-disciplinary emphasis helped to enable the social sciences and humanities to address themselves more effectively to the many contemporary scholarly problems lying on the periphery of individual disciplines. Thus, if East Asian or East European subjects of instruction and research could gain by the use of the area approach, the still more neglected African field was the more in need of such fortification. Moreover, African studies could, in the usual fashion of relative latecomers, avoid some of the pitfalls of the earliest area programs, e.g., needless tension between disciplinary and area interest or loyalty.

An Analysis and Bibliography of Recent African Atlases: Supplement One

1963 ◽  
Vol 6 (02) ◽  
pp. 6-9
Author(s):  
Richard E. Dahlberg ◽  
Benjamin E. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
University Of California ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Library Of Congress ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Geographical Society ◽  
Subject Headings ◽  
The University

This listing of recent African atlases is supplementary to that published in this Bulletin, October 1962. As in that article, atlases have been grouped according to major areas covered, and contents classified. Subject headings are: historical (hist.), physical and terrain (phys.), geology (geol.), climate (dim.), vegetation (veg.), soils, hydrography and irrigation (hydro.), political and administrative (pol.), agriculture and land use (agric.), forestry (for.), minerals and mining (min.), transportation (trans.), communications (commo.), miscellaneous economic (misc. econ.), population (pop.), tribes and races (trib.), languages (lang.), religious (relig.), health and diseases (health), African regions (regional), city and vicinity (city), other African subjects (other sub.), and non-African or extra-regional areas (other areas). This analysis is based mainly upon atlases examined at the Map Division in the Library of Congress, the American Geographical Society in New York, and the University of California, Los Angeles. This article is part of a research project supported by the African Studies Center at UCLA. The authors welcome comments on errors or omissions.

African Urban Notes

1967 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 570-571
Author(s):  
Michael Safier
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
University Of California ◽  
African Studies ◽  
News Letter ◽  
Urban Research ◽  
The University ◽  
Edward Soja

An occasional news-letter, monitoring all aspects of urban research in Africa, is at present edited by Ruth Simms Hamilton, George Jenkins, and Edward Soja, and produced under the auspices of the African Studies Centre at the University of California, Los Angeles. Eight issues of African Urban Notes have so far appeared, the first in April 1966 and the most recent in August 1967, together with three bibliographical supplements.

An Analysis and Bibliography of Recent African Atlases

1962 ◽  
Vol 5 (03) ◽  
pp. 23-33
Author(s):  
Richard E. Dahlberg ◽  
Benjamin E. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
University Of California ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Library Of Congress ◽  
World War ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Geographical Society ◽  
The University

Some of the most accessible sources for African maps are the new atlases which have been published since World War II. If we interpret the term “atlas” loosely so as to include any assemblage of maps which can be placed on a book shelf, the range of subject materials covered is surprisingly large -- from agriculture to zoogeography. But despite the wealth of data which is presented in convenient map form, it is difficult to obtain information about atlases and their contents. The purpose of this article is to provide a guide to the kinds of information which is available, and a list of atlases and other publications with African maps which have appeared since 1945. The analysis is based mainly upon atlases examined at the Map Division in the Library of Congress, at the American Geographical Society in New York, and at the University of California, Los Angeles. A few additional atlases were obtained through inter-library loan. Mrs. Clara Egli LeGear, of the Map Division, Library of Congress, provided especially helpful bibliographic aid at the early stages of the survey. This article is a part of a research project supported by the African Studies Center at U. C. L. A. More extension listings of African maps and atlases are in preparation; the authors would therefore welcome comments upon errors or omissions which may be noted in the article.

Dialogues

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 53-59
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
New Spain ◽  
American Art ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
State Building ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Political Space ◽  
California Missions ◽  
The University

The California missions, whose original church spaces and visual programs were produced by Iberian, Mexican, and Native artisans between 1769 and 1823, occupy an ambiguous chronological, geographical, and political space. They occupy lands that have pertained to conflicting territorialities: from Native nations, to New Spain, to Mexico, to the modern multicultural California. The physical and visual landscapes of the missions have been sites of complex and often incongruous religious experiences; historical trauma and romantic vision; Indigenous genocide, exploitation, resistance, and survivance; state building and global enterprise. This Dialogues section brings together critical voices, including especially the voices of California Indian scholars, to interrogate received models for thinking about the art historical legacies of the California missions. Together, the contributing authors move beyond and across borders and promote new decolonial strategies that strive to be responsive to the experience of California Indian communities and nations. This conversation emerges from cross-disciplinary relationships established at a two-day conference, “‘American’ Art and the Legacy of Conquest: Art at California’s Missions in the Global 18th–20th Centuries,” sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art and held at the University of California, Los Angeles, in November 2019.

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