The Black Studies Tradition and the Mappings of Our Common Intellectual Project (Report‪)‬

"the African American Studies discipline is accurately conceptualized as a set of theoretical perspectives, rather than a single theoretical perspective, a set of perspectives that has developed out of a discourse about how to constitute knowledge of historical and contemporary experiences, conditions, and aspirations of black people" (Hall 1999, 63). The discipline that Hall refers to here, as African-American Studies, carries various designations, including African Diaspora Studies, Africana Studies, African New World Studies, Africology, Afro-American Studies, Pan-African Studies and Black Studies. The differing names depend completely upon what academic institution is brought into question, as departments across the country have sought to adopt titles that best fit their aspirations at particular junctures in their historical development. Although the discipline remains decorated with various monikers, it is, as Hall points out, bound by a shared critical engagement and study of the experiences of Black people. While the theoretical approaches to studying Black people are almost as varied as the multifarious names the discipline goes by, it is the link between the two--nomenclature and theory--that rests as the central concern of this article. Essentially, this article argues that the disparate names used to describe the field are more than just names; in fact, the multiple monikers are bound by geographical assumptions that have direct implications for questions of epistemology in defining the scope and shape of the discipline.