September 16, 2007

New Africana Studies Engage Black Experience Globally

By Gary Hornbacher
Contributing Writer, The Baltimore Sun

In many ways, education has always mirrored the social and cultural tenor of the times, so it isn’t surprising that the 1960s and 70s found many colleges and universities adding African-American studies to their curriculum. Drawing from history, literature, the arts, political sciences, religion and other areas of study, these popular interdisciplinary courses and programs – sometimes profoundly reflecting a respective institution’s history and goals – enrich the liberal arts focus of many institutions.

Today, African-American studies programs – including undergraduate minors, majors, and master’s level degree programs – are widely available. Designed to provide students with knowledge and critical thinking skills, they are not so much jobs-focused as they are intended to broaden perspective and prepare students with tools needed to succeed in the many diverse employment arenas found in today’s global society.

As such programs have grown and matured, they have helped open new doors to a closely related academic focus often referred to as Africana studies. Locally, Johns Hopkins University, Morgan State University, and Goucher College all offer examples of exciting new courses and degree track programs that fall under the Africana umbrella.

Africana, explains Ben Vinson III, a professor of Latin American History and director of the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University, is an old word that has acquired new meaning in today’s academic world.

“Different people may explain it differently,” says Vinson, “but what it really means is that we’re looking at the black experience at a global level.”

The three-year-old JHU Africana Studies program, which includes both undergraduate majors and minors, draws upon an interdisciplinary array of current university course offerings and new Center-grown courses whose content fits the globalized Africana focus reflected in the Center’s broad curriculum.

“In one sense, we see Africana studies fulfilling the [university’s] broader humanistic vision of liberal arts,” says Vinson. “Students might use their Africana studies, like a history major would, as part of a track in law; possibly to pursue a master’s degree in international relations; or as a means of acquiring an additional sensitivity that, for example, someone in the medical sciences wanting to work in the African-American or Afro-Caribbean community, might desire.”

Parenthetically, Vinson adds that the Africana Studies Center recently launched a course in community/public health that has been very successful.

“It’s kind of a quick step for deeper understanding for dealings [students] might have in the broader world,” says Vinson. “We’re drawing upon people in the public health program who want to further their understanding and facilitate student placements.”

Indeed, with major objectives of Africana programs being to internationalize the curriculum, expand cultural awareness and expose students to the global marketplace, the geographic and historical sweep of such programs have great appeal. That’s evidenced by the striking diversity in the backgrounds and goals of students sampling courses or adding selected concentrations to their selected academic program, note insiders.

At Morgan State University, Mbare Ngom, director of African-American Studies and director of a new program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies with focus of the African diaspora, shares Vinson’s enthusiasm.

The new Morgan State program, being launched this fall, will offer a minor, and long term – it is hoped – a major in African Studies. Discussions regarding a study abroad and service learning component are ongoing, says Ngom, and, over the next two or three years, faculty training and related focus will add to other steps being taken to develop the university’s pool of specialists in this new area.

“In American academia,” says Ngom, explaining how the new program differs from the university’s well established African-American studies program offerings, “when we say African-American studies, we are referring to a general and usual focus on the United States. Our new program – part of the university focus to internationalize the curriculum – broadens that geographic focus by looking at connections and the cultural spread of Africans on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Other historically black universities have focused on the Caribbean or
the African diaspora, adds Ngom, “but we are one of the first in the nation to concentrate courses in a program like this.”

At Goucher College, Angelo Robinson, an assistant professor of English who is involved with that institution’s Africana studies, says that the latter’s core courses fall into four sections – politics, history, cultural, and social evidence (anthropology, sociology, religion, etc.), and expressive discourse.

“We started our program in 2004 with in-house faculty,” says Robinson. “We offer a minor in Africana Studies and have hopes of it becoming a major. We also have students taking courses for electives and some for major requirements – like English, and American Studies majors.”

“With its natural connections between different disciplines, Africana touches everything about the African experience on both sides of the Atlantic. The Goucher courses are well attended, says Robinson, with students representing a good cross-section of the college’s population.

“[Africana studies] looks at the entire spectrum, offering students a global perspective,” says Robinson. “Our goal isn’t specifically jobs but students might work in an educational setting, a museum, in journalism and then, of course, some students will go on to graduate school.”

As Robinson, Ngom, Vinson and many others deal with where the African-American experience fits within a larger global experience, as questions are answered and new ones poised, it is programs like theirs that address the kind of connections, the position and relevance African-based populations have in this environment.

And it’s not just faculty who are finding those answers. At Johns Hopkins University, the Center for Africana Studies and the Center for Educational Resources have received a Mellon grant to inventory content of the Afro-American Newspapers archives and ultimately produce a

“This grant will allow us to really equip our students with tools they might otherwise not get in terms of dealing with libraries and archives,” says Vinson. “We hope that by utilizing this partnership with the archives and multi-institutional partnerships, we can really transform the way black studies is taught.”