Contemporary Critical Thought in Africology and Africana Studies

Molefi Kete Asante is current chair and creator of the first doctoral program in African American studies at Temple University and co-editor of the Journal of Black Studies. Clyde Ledbetter Jr. is instructor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Science at Cheyney University.

• Introduction: Contemporary Critical Contours: Africology and Africana Studies, Molefi Kete Asante and Clyde E. Ledbetter, Jr.Chapter 1: Decolonizing the Universities in Africa: An Approach to Transformation, Molefi Kete AsanteChapter 2: Postmodernist Diversions In African American Thought, Daryl B. HarrisChapter 3: Afrocentricity: A Critical Bibliography, Molefi Kete AsanteChapter 4: Boundless James Baldwin: Assessing the Creative Freedom of a Cultural Critic, Aaron X. SmithChapter 5: The Role of an Afrocentric Ideology in Reducing Obstacles to Integration, Molefi Kete AsanteChapter 6: Writing History and Reading Texts: An Afrocentric Narrative of Culture, Nilgun Anadolu OkurChapter 7: Retrospective Analysis: The Movement Against African Centered Thought, Michael T. TillotsonChapter 8: Lewis Gordon’s Existential Cartography, Molefi Kete AsanteChapter 9: Human Rights Studies as a Sub-Field of Africology, Clyde E. Ledbetter, Jr.Chapter 10: Engaging Kwame Nkrumah’s Consciencism: An Afrocentr

This anthology of Africological texts is both an outcry against senseless attempts to ignore and dismiss the intellectual production of Afrocentric critical thinkers and an important academic contribution to strengthening the identity of the discipline. Anchored to the best praxis of Temple School critical thinking, a stronghold of Africology, the contributors to this volume present their critical studies on history, culture, language, and politics from an Afrocentric perspective. In fact, they are working towards the creation of a liberating discourse that operates simultaneously in the spheres of the personal, the community, nature, and the world. This work is a fundamental piece of Africological scholarship for graduate and undergraduate students and researchers seeking to pursue their intellectual quest within the discipline.