Africana Studies and the Production of Future Scholars (Part III: on the Horizon) (Report‪)‬

The institutionalization of the interdisciplinary field of "Africana Studies" has gone through a number of important changes since its institutionalized inception in 1968. For the purpose of this discussion Africana Studies includes Black Studies, African American Studies, Africology, Pan-African Studies, etc. Regardless of its name, it has been institutionalized as programs and departments in institutions as varied as private liberal arts colleges and major research universities. They have been "fully" autonomous units and units connected to departments, they have been part of a cultural center or just a collection of courses coordinated by a faculty whose academic home is somewhere else. The faculty in some of these departments/programs primary obligation is to Africana Studies while in other departments/ programs the faculty's primary obligation is to another department/program. As you can see the diversity in Africana Studies is varied. However, regardless of the structure or composition of the faculty there is one key ingredient that tends to be a part of the culture of the field. That ingredient is the importance of generating knowledge and the training of scholars that can generate knowledge to help empower people of African descent to act in their best interests. This can be done in a number of ways, including but not limited to graduate education. For purposes of this discussion the focus will be on developing and maintaining graduate education as a means to perpetuate the future of the field.