Synopses & Reviews
Focusing on the problems and conflicts of doing African diaspora research from various disciplinary perspectives, these essays situate, describe, and reflect on the current practice of diaspora scholarship. Tejumola Olaniyan, James H. Sweet, and the international group of contributors assembled here seek to enlarge understanding of how the diaspora is conceived and explore possibilities for the future of its study. With the aim of initiating interdisciplinary dialogue on the practice of African diaspora studies, they emphasize learning from new perspectives that take advantage of intersections between disciplines. Ultimately, they advocate a fuller sense of what it means to study the African diaspora in a truly global way.
Review
"Opens the way for a still emergent field, emergent in its attention to how global histories and processes figure in geographic regions and subjects beyond the Cold War configuration of regional political alliances." --Paulla Ebron, Stanford University Indiana University Press
Review
"Truly remarkable, innovative, important, and critical scholarship that is unparalleled in its interventions at the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological levels." --Percy Hintzen, University of California, Berkeley Indiana University Press
Review
"The African Diaspora and the Disciplines... ranks as an excellent contribution to the growing field [of African diaspora studies].... [I]t is a cogent, suggestive work that will energize scholars across the disciplines to further mine this rich vein." --postcolonialnetworks.com
Review
"Overall, this collection is a very timely and useful contribution to the slowly emerging body of studies of the African diasporas." --Centre for African Studies
Review
"The African Diaspora and the Disciplines is a cutting-edge publication that is long overdue. Apart from general readers, it can be recommended for upper-level African diaspora courses and graduate theory and methods courses. Its discussion of genetic diasporas in particular will serve as a scientific and biological bridge linking New World black diasporic ideation about notions of a "homeland" and the environs where these homes sprouted prior to the Middle Passage." --Africa Today
Review
"The volume as a whole reflects a courageous effort: it goes beyond empirical specifics of the African diaspora to provide an interim report on intellectual work crossing the boundaries of national units and disciplinary boxes." --Journal of African History, Vol. 52.2, 2011 Indiana University Press
About the Author
Tejumola Olaniyan is the Louise Durham Mead Professor of English and African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is author of Arrest the Music! (IUP, 2004).
James H. Sweet is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is author of Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770.
Table of Contents
Introduction / Tejumola Olaniyan and James H. Sweet
Part 1. Histories
1. Clio and the Griot: The African Diaspora in the Discipline of History / Kim D. Butler
2. African Diaspora and Anthropology / Richard Price
3. How Genetics Can Provide Detail to the Transatlantic African Diaspora / Fatimah L. C. Jackson and Latifa F. J. Borgelin
4. Landscapes and Places of Memory: African Diaspora Research and Geography / Judith A. Carney
5. African Diaspora in Archaeology / Theresa A. Singleton
Part 2. Social Sciences
6. Caribbean Sociology, Africa, and the African Diaspora / Paget Henry
7. African Diaspora and Political Science / Robert Fatton Jr.
8. The African Diaspora and Philosophy / Olúfémi Táíwò
Part 3. Arts and Culture
9. "Function at the Junction"? African Diaspora Studies and Theater Studies / Sandra L. Richards
10. Ethnomusicology and the African Diaspora / Melvin L. Butler
11. Semioptics of Africana Art History / Moyo Okediji
12. Out of Context: Thinking Cultural Studies Diasporically / Grant Farred
Part 4. Diaspora Contexts
13. African Diaspora Studies in the Creole-Anglophone Caribbean: A Perspective from the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica / Carolyn Cooper
14. South Africa's Elusive Quest for an African Identity: The Ironies of a South AfricaLed African Renaissance / Xolela Mangcu 15. "Black Folk Here and There": Repositioning Other(ed) African Diaspora(s) in/and "Europe" / Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe
Contributors
Index