Throughout this article we argue that collectivity and soul inform the work of the expert teachers who we refer to as Jazz Pedagogues. Jazz's complicated history, like teaching, calls for a consideration of the painful, the messy, the beautiful, and the healing. We, a team of university researchers and classroom teachers, examine the ways jazz can…

What has it meant to produce knowledge and to teach at the intersection of English literature and Black Studies? This dissertation asks after the history and function of Black literary studies as it emerged as an academic discipline in the late 20th century U.S. academy. I propose that Black literary studies' institutional knowledge project is…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate multimodal composition as an exercise or tool for teaching students theory building. To illustrate, an analysis of artifacts comprising a student's multimodal composition, which was created in response to a multipart literacy assignment on theorizing Blackness, is analyzed. Design/methodology/approach:…

From a particular vantage point, as an African-born scholar with a politics to affirm my Black subjectivity and Indigeneity in a diasporic context, my article engages a (re)theorization of Blackness for decolonial politics. Building on existing works of how Black scholars, themselves, have theorized Blackness, and recognizing the fluid,…

Thomas Kuhn's 1962 groundbreaking work, "The Scientific Revolution," established the process for creating, and the components of, a disciplinary paradigm. This "scientific revolution" has evolved to become the standard for determining a field's claim to disciplinary status. In 2001 and 2003, Ama Mazama, used Kuhn's model to establish the…

Two Afro Caribbean immigrants share our individual experiences of navigating the United States (US) academy, and the strengths we derived in the process. We explore the questions: How do we make meaning of our experiences as members of the academe? What accounts for our ability to perform, develop, and grow as scholars in the US? We used the…

It's been 21 years since the nation's first Ph.D. program in African American studies was established at Temple University. One of only 10 university departments in the U.S. that trains doctoral students in Black studies, the Temple program is the top producer of Ph.D. recipients in the field with 160 doctoral graduates. This fall semester, Dr.…

This article provides the syllabus for the course "WRA 125--Writing: The Ethnic and Racial Experience: An Afrocentric Approach." This course will examine writing the American, ethnic and racial experience, using an Afrocentric framework to explore the field of Composition Studies. Students will be introduced to Ebonics/African American Language…

This article focuses on the sense of what an "African" (American) identity could mean when viewed through the processes of migrations and fluid identities of contemporary African immigrant children as they interact with their African (Americans) peers in schools. The purpose of this article is to use data from a study of West African…

This integrative review uses two of Asa Grant Hilliard's books, "SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind" and "The Maroon Within Us: Selected Essays on African American Community Socialization", to discuss aspects of his scholarly legacy in teaching, history, and psychology. His scholarship is provocative. Hilliard rejected the supremacy of the…

Develops a theory of black studies by examining the works of the foremost writers in, and critics of, the field. Uses the history of the black intellectual tradition as a frame and places black studies in the context of multicultural studies, the contemporary academy, and the development of the global economy and culture. Discusses Afrocentricity…

This article explicates the literature on cultural reattachment Africentric education. Cultural reattachment is a process whereby people of African descent begin to adopt (in whole or in part) aspects of an African culture (e.g., Wolof or Akan). Africentric education is defined as the adoption of Africentric ideology and cultural relevancy.…

The works of over 75 communication scholars have consistently traced the markers of communication in African American life. There exists a complex and varied corpus that is necessarily interdisciplinary and multifarious in perspectives and context. The space(s) is theirs to define and, perhaps, to claim. Such studies may reward scholars most when…

Presents a historical perspective on important questions about the scientific status of Afrocentricity, its thrust toward community, advocates of Afrocentrism, nationalism and communality, gender issues, and Afrocentricity's role in comparative studies. The current emergence of African-American studies curricula in universities reflect a…

Black Studies is increasingly being shaped and defined for Blacks rather than by Blacks. Black Studies scholars must adopt a position apart from, outside, or in critique of the established paradigm of Eurocentric scholarship, and operate within an Afrocentric historical paradigm. (BJV)