The Development of African Studies in the United States

1966 ◽  
Vol 9 (03) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Carol A. Dressel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Junior College ◽  
The United States ◽  
African Studies ◽  
African Religions ◽  
African Languages ◽  
College Curriculum ◽  
Carnegie Corporation ◽  
Available Information

The earliest interest in Africa among institutions of higher education in the United States was probably that of denominational colleges which trained missionaries for Africa and other areas. But their motivation was to bring the fruits of Western civilization to non-Western areas, and this had no effect on the college curriculum of the nineteenth century. The missionary interest has continued in at least one major African studies program. The Hartford Seminary Foundation offers courses on missionary problems, African religions, and Christianity in Africa. It also teaches several African languages. Northwestern University has had an interest in African anthropology which dates back to 1927. No available information, however, has revealed whether courses then offered included the study of Africa. During World War II, there was an abortive attempt to organize an International Conference on Africa, and just after the war, an instructor at Colby Junior College included the study of African literature in an English course. The Carnegie Corporation aided the development of African studies by extending their grants for area studies to the African field, giving funds for fellowships and sending small groups of scholars to Africa for “look-see” tours. Superficial as these tours may have been, a number of their participants later became Africanists.

Conference on the Teaching of African Languages

1964 ◽  
Vol 7 (03) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
L. Gray Cowan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
African Language ◽  
African Languages ◽  
National Defense Education Act ◽  
Summer Session ◽  
Education Act

A small conference was held in New York on March 19 to 20, 1964, concerning the general position of the teaching of African Languages in the United States at the present moment. The conference, called at the joint request of the National Defense Education Act Language and Area Centers and Columbia University's Institute of African Studies, was attended by the directors and teachers of African language of the major centers of African studies in the United States. In the course of the two-day meeting the directors reported in some detail on the position of African language teaching in their respective universities and a number of clarifications of NDEA policy were presented by Mr. Donald Bigelow. The question of a summer session on African languages was discussed at length and a variety of suggestions were offered for possible changes in the format of the existing summer session sponsored by NDEA. In this connection, a resolution was passed urging the establishment of a summer Institute of African Languages, to be located at a permanent site, and under the sponsorship of the African Studies Association.

scholarly journals Building intellectual bridges: from African studies and African American studies to Africana studies in the United States

Afrika Focus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
American Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
African American Studies ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Diaspora Studies ◽  
Africana Studies

The study of Africa and its peoples in the United States has a complex history. It has involved the study of both an external and internal other, of social realities in Africa and the condition of people of African descent in the United States. This paper traces and examines the complex intellectual, institutional, and ideological histories and intersections of African studies and African American studies. It argues that the two fields were founded by African American scholar activists as part of a Pan-African project before their divergence in the historically white universities after World War II in the maelstrom of decolonization in Africa and civil rights struggles in the United States. However, from the late 1980s and 1990s, the two elds began to converge, a process captured in the development of what has been called Africana studies. The factors behind this are attributed to both demographic shifts in American society and the academy including increased African migrations in general and of African academics in particular fleeing structural adjustment programs that devastated African universities, as well as the emergence of new scholarly paradigms especially the field of diaspora studies. The paper concludes with an examination of the likely impact of the Obama era on Africana studies. Key words: African studies, African American studies, African diaspora studies, Africana studies 

African Studies Association of the United States

1964 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-292
Author(s):  
Margaret L. Bates
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Field Work ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Carnegie Corporation ◽  
Fellowship Programme ◽  
Training Fellowship ◽  
Lincoln University

This Association was founded in 1958 as a meeting point for all American scholars seriously interested in African affairs, and it is now one of the most active organisations in the field. African study in the United States started much earlier, with the pioneering field work of Melville Herskovits, the interest of Lincoln University in the education of young Africans, and the first steps by W. E. B. Du Bois to create a Pan-African movement. During World War II, there were attempts to organise an international conference on Africa. Most academic interest, however, dates from the late 1940's, when the Carnegie Corporation of New York extended its programme of grants to universities for area studies to include the African field, gave funds for fellowships and sent groups of mature scholars to Africa for ‘look-see’ tours. In the 1950's, the Ford Foundation made major grants to Northwestern, Boston, and Howard Universities, and established a field training fellowship programme under which a majority of the younger Africanists now active in the United States have been trained. Other university programmes have followed; there are now more than 20.

scholarly journals Building intellectual bridges: from African studies and African American studies to Africana studies in the United States

Afrika Focus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-31
Author(s):  
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
American Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
African American Studies ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Africana Studies

The study of Africa and its peoples in the United States has a complex history. It has involved the study of both an external and internal other, of social realities in Africa and the condition of people• of African descent in the United States. This paper traces and examines the complex intellectual, institutional, and ideological histories and intersections of African studies and African American studies. It argues that the two fields were founded by African American scholar activists as part of a Pan-African project before their divergence in the historically white universities after World War II in the maelstrom of decolonization in Africa and civil rights struggles in the United States. However, from the late 1980s and 1990s, the two fields began to converge, a process captured in the development of what has been called Africana studies. The factors behind this are attributed to both demographic shifts in American society and the academy including increased African migrations in general and of African academics in particular fleeing structural adjustment programs that devastated African universities, as well as the emergence of new scholarly paradigms especially the field of diaspora studies. The paper concludes with an examination of the likely impact of the Obama era on Africana studies.

Enemy Number One

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rósa Magnúsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Inferiority Complex ◽  
Available Information

Enemy Number One tells the story of Soviet propaganda and ideology toward the United States during the early Cold War. From Stalin’s anti-American campaign to Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence, this book covers Soviet efforts to control available information about the United States and to influence the development of Soviet-American cultural relations until official cultural exchanges were realized between the two countries. The Soviet and American veterans of the legendary 1945 meeting on the Elbe and their subsequent reunions represent the changes in the superpower relationship: during the late Stalin era, the memory of the wartime alliance was fully silenced, but under Khrushchev it was purposefully revived and celebrated as a part of the propaganda about peaceful coexistence. The author brings to life the propaganda warriors and ideological chiefs of the early Cold War period in the Soviet Union, revealing their confusion and insecurities as they tried to navigate the uncertain world of the late Stalin and early Khrushchev cultural bureaucracy. She also shows how concerned Soviet authorities were with their people’s presumed interest in the United States of America, resorting to monitoring and even repression, thereby exposing the inferiority complex of the Soviet project as it related to the outside world.

Bones of Contention: China’s World War II Military Graves in India, Burma, and Papua New Guinea

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linh D. Vu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
International Status

Abstract Exploring the construction and maintenance of Nationalist Chinese soldiers’ graves overseas, this article sheds light on post-World War II commemorative politics. After having fought for the Allies against Japanese aggression in the China-Burma-India Theater, the Chinese expeditionary troops sporadically received posthumous care from Chinese veterans and diaspora groups. In the Southeast Asia Theater, the Chinese soldiers imprisoned in the Japanese-run camps in Rabaul were denied burial in the Allied war cemetery and recognition as military heroes. Analyzing archival documents from China, Taiwan, Britain, Australia, and the United States, I demonstrate how the afterlife of Chinese servicemen under foreign sovereignties mattered in the making of the modern Chinese state and its international status.

Do We Need a Postmodern Anthropology for Mission in a Postcolonial World?

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Rynkiewich
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
World War ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cross Fertilization

Abstract There was a time when mission studies benefitted from a symbiotic relationship with the social sciences. However, it appears that relationship has stagnated and now is waning. The argument is made here, in the case of cultural anthropology both in Europe and the United States, that a once mutually beneficial though sometimes strained relationship has suffered a parting of the ways in recent decades. First, the article reviews the relationships between missionaries and anthropologists before World War II when it was possible to be a ‘missionary anthropologist’ with a foot in both disciplines. In that period, the conversation went two ways with missionary anthropologists making important contributions to anthropology. Then, the article reviews some aspects of the development of the two disciplines after World War II when increasing professionalism in both disciplines and a postmodern turn in anthropology took the disciplines in different directions. Finally, the article asks whether or not the conversation, and thus the cross-fertilization, can be restarted, especially since the youngest generation of anthropologists has recognized the reality of local Christianities in their fields of study.

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