UMBC Africana Studies

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The Department of Africana Studies (AFST) provides students of all ethnic, national and cultural backgrounds the necessary tools to understand, critically evaluate, analyze and interpret events and phenomena that structure the experiences, possibilities and dynamics of the people of African descent in the United States, Africa and its Diasporas. AFST students are offered a broad array of courses addressing cultural, economic, historical, political, psychological and sociological issues that affect peoples of African descent from diverse disciplinary and comparative perspectives. Africana Studies at UMBC offers a rigorous and challenging academic program that prepares students to think and write critically and clearly, engage in research and service, argue persuasively, and effectively solve problems. AFST adopts an interdisciplinary approach that is sensitive to the interests and outlook of the people of African descent and their contributions to the interdependent global world through human development and civilization, arts and the sciences.

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Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    The 2023 UMBC Africana Studies Conference
    (UMBC Center for Social Science Research, 2023-08-04) Anson, Ian; Chuku, Gloria; Tripp, Aili M.
    On this episode we hear a rebroadcast of a presentation that formed a part of the 2023 UMBC Africana Studies Conference, organized by Dr. Gloria Chuku, Professor and Chair of UMBC’s Africana Studies Department. The lecture, which took place in May of 2023, was given by keynote speaker Dr. Aili M. Tripp. Dr. Tripp is Vilas Research Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tripp’s research has focused on gender/women and politics, women’s movements in Africa, transnational feminism, African politics (with particular reference to Uganda and Tanzania), autocracies in Africa, and on the informal economy in Africa. She is presently working on a project on women’s political leadership in African autocracies and a second project on women’s political citizenship and conflict globally.
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    The Legacy of Black Vaudeville w/ Dr. Michelle Scott
    (UMBC Center for Social Science Research, 2023-06-14) Anson, Ian; Scott, Michelle
    On this episode Dr. Anson speaks with Dr. Michelle Scott, Professor of History and Affiliate Faculty in Gender and Women’s Studies, Language, Literacy and Culture, and Africana Studies at UMBC, about her recent book: T.O.B.A. Time: Black Vaudeville and the Theater Owners’ Booking Association in Jazz-Age America Check out the following links for more information on UMBC, CS3, and our host: The UMBC Center for the Social Sciences Scholarship The University of Maryland, Baltimore County Ian G. Anson, Ph.D.
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    Crazy in Louvre: How Beyoncé and Jay-Z Exploit Western Art History to Ask Who Controls Black Bodies
    (Frieze, 2018-06-29) Smalls, James
    An art historian explains what the Carters’s takeover of the Paris museum says about art, race and power
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    James Smalls on Here is a Strange and Bitter Crop
    (Space Studios, 2018-09) Smalls, James
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    Black COVID Stories w/ Dr. Kaye Whitehead
    (UMBC Center for Social Science Research, 2021-09-17) Anson, Ian; Whitehead, Kaye
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    The Persistence of Slavery: An Economic History of Child Trafficking in Nigeria. By Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine (book review)
    (Oxford Academic, 2022-08-10) Chuku, Gloria
    Ironically, the abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of the enslaved were among the European justifications for the colonization of Africa. Yet, enslavement and pawning—a practice where children were left with creditors as loan collateral until debtors repaid their loans—persisted if not intensified under new legal, economic, political, and social conditions unleashed by European colonial rule in Africa. In The Persistence of Slavery, Chapdelaine presents a nuanced account of the complexity of economic, political, and social changes caused by colonialism that led to the persistence of child enslavement, child trafficking, and other forms of coerced labor in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century southeastern Nigeria, particularly, Igbo society. Relying on colonial, anthropological and missionary records, newspaper articles, interviews of nearly two dozen respondents conducted by research assistants, and other sources, and applying the “social economy of a child” framework, the author impressively demonstrates how children as slaves, pawns, child brides, and traffickers produced wealth for their families, communities and the colonial sate in Nigeria. Chapdelaine argues that child trafficking, child slavery, and child labor persisted in the region beyond the nineteenth-century anti-slavery movement because of their value as wealth generators. She shows that contemporary child trafficking and bondage is a continuation of the centuries of transatlantic and domestic enslavement and pawnship in Africa.
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    Igbo historiography: Parts I, II, and III
    (John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2018-08-15) Chuku, Gloria
    Igbo historiography has advanced since the publication of the epic narrative of Olaudah Equiano in 1789 and its different versions, especially that of Paul Edwards, a British literary historian in 1969. The main objective of this essay is to demonstrate the vitality and diversity of Igbo historical studies and provide informative and thoughtful interpretations of its strengths and weaknesses. In three parts, the essay examines the origin, dispersal, and settlement of the people; sociopolitical institutions and organization; economic systems, including slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, and the colonial economy; Igbo religion, Islam, Christianity, and Western education; colonial encounter; the Igbo in precolonial and modern Nigeria with focus on intergroup relations, ethnicity, and the Nigeria–Biafra War; and Igbo intellectual history. The essay makes a spirited critique of areas of overemphasis and the conceptual and methodological issues. It suggests important neglected themes that require further historical investigations. Its primary goal is to nudge Igbo historiography in new and challenging directions and inspire historians interested in Igbo studies to adopt a historiographical approach that emphasizes currency, relevance, and usability.