We would like to invite you to contribute a chapter in an edited textbook focusing on the Africana experience worldwide. This book is intended to give both instructors and college students a comprehensive and up-to-date account of historical and contemporary issues characterizing the Black experience including the socio-cultural, political, and economic struggles and progress, artistic expressiveness, religious and philosophical worldviews, innovation and other achievements. The mainstreaming of the African and the African Diaspora studies in the institutions of higher education is one of the major achievements of the nationalist movements in Africa and the civil rights struggles in the United States. Since the late 1950s, institutions of higher learning in Africa, North America, Europe, and more recently Asia have established programs and departments that offer majors and minors in different facets of the Black experience. Variously referred as Africana Studies, Pan-African Studies, Black Studies, African and African American/Diaspora Studies and so on, these programs serve to challenge the dominant Eurocentric intellectual cannons that dominate scholarship in the West. Although these programs and departments help to diversify university curricula and provide counter narratives that humanize the marginalized, still only a few universities and colleges in North America have established them. Instead of creating programs and departments, many universities and colleges have incorporated individual courses on the Africana experiences in the curriculum of traditional disciplines such as history, political science, sociology, philosophy, and literature.
In universities and colleges that offer a major or a minor in Black/Africana studies, students are required to take an introductory survey course on the Black experience. The introductory survey course on the Africana people is significant because to most students it is their first encounter with the study of those descended from Africa. This course can serve an even greater value if incorporated into the curriculum of traditional liberal arts degrees such as history, when you consider the higher education trends underway with the composition of students becoming increasingly diverse, and students clamoring for more inclusive learning experiences. The introductory survey course on the experiences of African descended people should therefore be seen as an opportunity to enrich the liberal arts curriculum in all institutions of higher learning. Due to its significance, this course should be designed in a thoughtful manner that will make it accessible to freshmen students and take into consideration the global nature of the experiences of Africana people. There are very limited introductory level teaching resources such as textbooks and source documents that depict the global nature of the Black experiences. Through this call, we are aiming to bring together scholars on Africa and the African Diaspora studies to create a teaching resource that is both accessible and rich in learning and teaching activities. In addition to textual narrative on various chapters, the resource will include study activities, source documents, and question banks that will make both teaching and learning an interesting and intellectually stimulating endeavor.
Instructions:
The editors would like to invite you to contribute a chapter in this edited book. Each manuscript should explore any of the themes below. The editors welcome scholarly submissions from academics and researchers in the field. Please consult the list of themes below and send an email to mkithinji@uca.edu indicating your interest on or before August 31, 2019. Once your theme is approved, we will send instructions on how to complete your chapters which is expected on October 31, 2019. Each chapter should have between 6,000 and 8,000 words; it must be original and should not be previously published or simultaneously been reviewed elsewhere for publication. All submissions will be peer-reviewed before they are accepted for publication. For any further inquiries, do not hesitate to contact the editors.
Locating and Conceptualizing Africana People
1. Africana Spaces and Places
2. Development of the Field of Africana Studies
3. The Western Conceptual View of Africana People
Early Africa
4. Africa and the Origin of Humans and Civilization
5. Centralized and Acephalous States in Africa
6. Ancient African Civilizations
Trade and State Building
7. Trans-Saharan Trade and State Building in Northern and Western Africa
8. Indian Ocean Trade and State Building in Eastern and Central Africa
Slavery and Slave Trade
9. European and Islamic Slave Trade in Perspective
10. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
11. Slavery in Practice: Rebellions and Abolition
Post-Slavery Encounters and the Aftermath
12. The New European Imperialism and its impact on the Africana People
13. Colonial Africa and the Jim Crow System in the United States
14. Pan-Africanism and its Impact on Africana People
15. The Cold War and the Africana World
16. Post-Colonial Africa and Post-Civil Rights United States: A Comparative Evaluation
17. Continental Africans and African Americans: Nature of the Relationship
Religion in the Africana World
18. Indigenous African Religions
19. Christianity in the Africana World
20. Islam in the Africana World
Africana Culture and Achievement
21. Education and the Black Experience
22. Gender Rights and Achievements by Africana Women
23. The Commanding Heights of Sports: Achievements by Africana People
24. Africana Excellence in Art, Music, and Literature
25. Africana Excellence in Innovation, Economics, and Politics
Dr. Michael Mwenda Kithinji
Associate Professor of African History
Co-director of the African & African American Studies Program
University of Central Arkansas
Dr. Ogechi Emmanuel Anyanwu
Professor of African History
Eastern Kentucky University