The rich collection of essays in Introduction to Africana Studies: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Africana Experience provides a thorough and scholarly examination of Africa and its diasporas, focusing on Africana social and cultural history. The selections are written by experts in the fields of literature, history, sociology, anthropology, political writing, feminism, and cultural analysis. Divided into five broad, thematic units, the book begins with an examination of the African continent, its people and civilizations from ancient times through colonialism and post-colonialism. Section Two addresses slavery, colonialism, and freedom. Historical perspective is provided through material on West Africa in the era of slave trade. Readers will benefit from fresh views on emancipation and gain insight into role of religion for African Americans. Section Three is devoted to critical issues of race analysis, including the new racism and racism and feminism. Section Four discusses civil rights, Pan-Africanism, and nationalism, with selections on Black Power, the March on Washington, and Pan-Africanism and national identities. Section Five moves the discussion firmly into the contemporary with works on gender, the Black family, and current public policy issues. Effectively opening up new areas of thought across academic disciplines, Introduction to Africana Studies can be used in both undergraduate and graduate level courses in Africana and African diaspora studies. The book is also a useful tool for researchers in the field.

There is an ongoing debate as to whether African American Studies is a discipline, or multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary field. Some scholars assert that African American Studies use a well-defined common approach in examining history, politics, and the family in the same way as scholars in the disciplines of economics, sociology, and political science. Other scholars consider African American Studies multidisciplinary, a field somewhat comparable to the field of education in which scholars employ a variety of disciplinary lenses-be they anthropological, psychological, historical, etc., --to study the African world experience. In this model the boundaries between traditional disciplines are accepted, and researches in African American Studies simply conduct discipline based an analysis of particular topics. Finally, another group of scholars insists that African American Studies is interdisciplinary, an enterprise that generates distinctive analyses by combining perspectives from d

The third edition of Africana Studies: A Survey of Africa and the African Diaspora is an update of the second edition (1998) and incorporates new chapters that include expanded coverage of issues on women, health, terrorism, the African Union, and many others, as well as the most recent theories and methods in Africana studies. To date, Africana Studies remains the most comprehensive and most suitable text for both teachers and students interested in Africa and the Diaspora in the US, the Caribbean, Afro-Latin-America, and elsewhere. The book is divided into five parts: the state of the art of Africana studies; the evolution of the history of black people; analysis of the contributions of the black world; the present and future status of these peoples; and the societies and values of black people. The book also includes a chronology of significant events in the history of peoples of African descent and a number of maps. "[This book] attempts in one volume to present more accurately the experiences and contributions of the African world. It introduces readers to the most comprehensive account of black interdisciplinary subjects to date and summarizes the research of specialists in a variety of fields... The number of contributors, variety, and depth of coverage show that the work was carefully thought out." -- Insights, on an earlier edition

Introduction to African American Studies: A Reader chronicles the experience of African Americans in the United States from their first arrival in 1619 to present day. The reader demonstrates how African Americans and their experiences have shaped America's historical, political, economic, and cultural history. In Part I, students read about the continued significance of race in America and receive a primer on Africana studies. Part II examines the arrival of Africans to America, the Atlantic Slave Trade, slavery and states' rights in the early republic, and the issue of democracy in Jeffersonian America. Part III contains readings about Jim Crow, its lasting impact on Black communities, and the Niagara Movement. In Part IV, students learn about the impact of African American artists on literature, arts, and culture from 1927 - 1940. Part V includes readings on the Civil Rights Movement. The final part speaks to post-racial America in the age of Barack Obama. The second edition features new readings on Juneteenth, Jim Crow laws' impact on today's African American communities, female artists of the Harlem renaissance, African American women's roles in the Civil Rights Movement, Malcolm X, and what America would be like without Blacks. Gathering thought-provoking and critical literature, Introduction to African American Studies is an ideal resource for foundational courses within the discipline.