Encyclopedia Africana

Last updated

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience edited by Henry Louis Gates and Anthony Appiah (Basic Civitas Books 1999, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN   978-0-19-517055-9) is a compendium of Africana studies including African studies and the "Pan-African diaspora" inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois' project of an Encyclopedia Africana. Du Bois envisioned "an Encyclopedia Africana," which was to be "unashamedly Afro-Centric but not indifferent to the impact of the outside world." [1]

Contents

The first edition appeared in a single volume, of which about a third each was dedicated to North American African-American studies, to Afro-Latin American topics of Latin America and the Caribbean and to Africa proper. The second edition was published by Oxford University Press in five volumes, including more than 3500 entries on 3960 pages. [2] [3]

W. E. B. Du Bois and the Encyclopedia Africana

W. E. B. Du Bois and the Editorial and Advisory Boards of the Encyclopedia of the Negro, 1936 W.E.B. DuBois and the Editorial and Advisory Boards of the Encyclopedia of the Negro, 1936.jpg
W. E. B. Du Bois and the Editorial and Advisory Boards of the Encyclopedia of the Negro, 1936

Daniel Alexander Payne Murray was one of the first African-Americans to work as a librarian at the Library of Congress in 1871. In 1899 Murray organized an exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition on Negro authors. Under his direction, his award-winning exhibit became the core of the Library of Congress's Colored Author Collection. Murray planned to expand his collection and create an encyclopedia of African-American achievement. [4] Although he never completed the project, the idea of an encyclopedia that explored the Black experience was revived and expanded by W. E. B. Du Bois. In 1901 Du Bois widened the scope of the project to encompass the entire African diaspora. He suggested that the encyclopedia be called the Encyclopedia Africana in a similar fashion to the Encyclopædia Britannica . Du Bois envisioned a scientific and comprehensive work on Africa and peoples of African descent that would refute the Enlightenment notion of Black people as devoid of civilization and the hallmarks of humanity. Due to lack of support from the established philanthropies, the project died. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">W. E. B. Du Bois</span> American sociologist and activist (1868–1963)

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black studies</span> Academic field focusing on peoples of the African diaspora and Africa

Black studies or Africana studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field that primarily focuses on the study of the history, culture, and politics of the peoples of the African diaspora and Africa. The field includes scholars of African-American, Afro-Canadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, Afro-European, Afro-Asian, African Australian, and African literature, history, politics, and religion as well as those from disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. The field also uses various types of research methods.

The African American National Biography Project is a joint project of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University and Oxford University Press. The object of the project is to publish and maintain a database of African Americans similar in scope to the American National Biography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arturo Alfonso Schomburg</span> Puerto Rican historian, writer and activist 1874–1938)

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, was a historian, writer, bibliophile, collector, and activist. He also wrote many books. Schomburg was a Puerto Rican of African and German descent. He moved to the United States in 1891, settling in New York City, where he researched and raised awareness of the contributions that Afro-Latin Americans and African Americans have made to society. He was an important intellectual figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Over the years, he collected literature, art, slave narratives, and other materials of African history, which were purchased to become the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, named in his honor, at the New York Public Library (NYPL) branch in Harlem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirley Graham Du Bois</span> American-Ghanaian writer and activist (1896–1977)

Shirley Graham Du Bois was an American-Ghanaian writer, playwright, composer, and activist for African-American causes, among others. She won the Messner and the Anisfield-Wolf prizes for her works.

Double consciousness is the dual self-perception experienced by subordinated or colonized groups in an oppressive society. The term and the idea were first published in W. E. B. Du Bois's autoethnographic work, The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, in which he described the African American experience of double consciousness, including his own.

The W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute, formerly the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, is part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research located at Harvard University. Its main work is in the provision of fellowships to scholars studying a wide variety of topics relating to its central concerns, which are African and African American studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathan Huggins</span> American historian (1927–1989)

Nathan Irvin Huggins was a distinguished American historian, author and educator. As a leading scholar in the field of African American studies, he was W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of History and of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University as well as director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research. He died of cancer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 62.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">All-African People's Revolutionary Party</span> Political party in United States

The All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) is a socialist political party founded by Kwame Nkrumah and organized in Conakry, Guinea in 1968. The party expanded to the United States in 1972 and claims to have recruited members from 33 countries. According to the party, global membership in the party is "in the hundreds".

Afrocentric education refers to a pedagogical approach to education designed to empower people of the African diaspora with educational modes in contact and in line with the cultural assumptions common in their communities. A central premise behind it is that many Africans have been subjugated by having their awareness of themselves limited and by being indoctrinated with ideas that work against them and their cultures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Exhibit of American Negroes</span> Display at 1900 Worlds Fair in Paris

The Exhibit of American Negroes was a sociological display within the Palace of Social Economy at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. The exhibit was a joint effort between Daniel Murray, the Assistant Librarian of Congress, Thomas J. Calloway, a lawyer and the primary organizer of the exhibit, and W. E. B. Du Bois. The goal of the exhibition was to demonstrate progress and commemorate the lives of African Americans at the turn of the century.

The American Negro Academy (ANA), founded in Washington, DC in 1897, was the first organization in the United States to support African-American academic scholarship. It operated until 1928, and encouraged African Americans to undertake classical academic studies and liberal arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Louis Gates Jr.</span> American literary critic, professor and historian (born 1950)

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels and has published extensively on the recognition of African-American literature as part of the Western canon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. M. Battey</span> American photographer (1873–1927)

Cornelius Marion Battey was an American photographer who shot photographic portraits of black Americans in a pictorialist style. His photograph of black leaders appeared on the cover of the NAACP's magazine The Crisis beginning in the 1910s. He later founded and headed up the photography department at the Tuskegee Institute.

Horacio Mendizábal (1847–1871) was an Argentine poet, translator and activist.

<i>A.M.E. Church Review</i> Journal of the African Methodist Episcopal Church

The A.M.E. Church Review is the journal of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Established in 1841 and revived in 1884, it is arguably the earliest published African-American journal. It publishes articles on religion, politics, history, and world events.

<i>Dictionary of African Biography</i> Six-volume biographical dictionary

The Dictionary of African Biography is a six-volume biographical dictionary, published by Oxford University Press. Published in 2012, the editors-in-chief are Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., both of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute of Harvard University.

The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, also known as the Hutchins Center, is affiliated with Harvard University. The Center supports scholarly research on the history and culture of people of African descent around the world, facilitates collaboration and aims to increase public awareness of the subject. It was established as the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute in May 1975, making it the oldest research center focused on the study of the history, culture, and society of Africans and African Americans, with the rebranding as the Hutchins Center occurring in 2013.

<i>The Suppression of the African Slave-trade to the United States of America</i> 1894 thesis by W. E. B. Du Bois

The Suppression of the African Slave-trade to the United States of America (1894) was W. E. B. Du Bois's doctoral thesis for Harvard University which he finished while teaching at Wilberforce University. This thesis made Du Bois the first African-American to earn a Ph.D from Harvard.

The Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro–Latin American Biography (DCALAB) is a six-volume, 2080-entry biographical dictionary that was published in May 2016 by Oxford University Press. The project was funded by the Mellon Foundation. The editors were Franklin W. Knight and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

References

  1. Wilson Jeremiah Moses and Cain Hope Felder: Two Scholars Discuss Afrocentrism
  2. Encyclopedia Africana online The official website
  3. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Archived 2007-12-17 at the Wayback Machine Department of African American Studies, Harvard University
  4. Daniel Alexander Payne Murray (1852-1925), Forgotten Librarian, Bibliographer, and Historian by Walker, Billie E. Libraries & Culture - Volume 40, Number 1, Winter 2005, pp. 25-37
  5. Gates, Henry Louis (2000). "W. E. B. Du Bois and the Encyclopedia Africana, 1909-63". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 568: 203–219 via JSTOR.