Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies

by Carole Boyce Davies (Editor), Meredith Gadsby (Editor), Charles Peterson (Editor)

Decolonizing the Academy asserts that the academy is perhaps the most colonized space. As we enter the twenty-first century, this has become even clearer now that the academy is one of the primary sites for the production and re-production of ideas that serve the interests of colonizing powers. Operating at the macro level in terms of the state and at the micro level in various applications, these interests include the organization of the disciplines, the marginalization of interdisciplinary studies, the re-assertion of masculinities, and the operations of class, privilege, and hierarchy. This collection of essays argues that African diaspora theory has the possibility of interrupting the current colonizing process and re-engaging the decolonizing process at the level of the mind, as emphasized by Ngugi wa Thiong’o in an earlier contribution. In addition, the collection asserts that this will be an ongoing project worthy of being undertaken in a variety of fields of study as we confront the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Paperback

First published February 19, 2004

About the author

Carole Boyce Davies is Professor of African–New World Studies and English at Florida International University. She is the author of Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject; the editor of the Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (forthcoming) and Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies; and a coeditor of The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities.