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Africana and Black Studies

Welcome & About This Research Guide

Welcome to the Africana & Black Studies Research Guide at Central Washington University

We're glad you're here. This guide contains information and resources relating to the field of Africana & Black Studies. Here, you'll find tips for getting started on your research and curated, subject-specific resources for conducting research in the field of Africana & Black Studies.

About Africana & Black Studies

Africana & Black Studies is the interdisciplinary study of the histories, cultures, and politics of Afro-descendants in Africa and the African diaspora.

Africana & Black Studies at CWU

Course Specific & Related Research Guides

Featured Titles in Africana & Black Studies

Black Queer Identity Matrix

This volume launches the first sustained discussion of the need for a queer of color conceptual framework around Black, lesbian female identity. Specifically, this volume addresses the necessity for a more integrated framework within queer studies, in which the variables of race/ethnicity are taken into consideration.

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W. E. B. du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America

The colorful charts, graphs, and maps presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition by famed sociologist and black rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois offered a view into the lives of black Americans, conveying a literal and figurative representation of "the color line." From advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery, these prophetic infographics —beautiful in design and powerful in content—make visible a wide spectrum of Black experiences.

Beyond the Black Lady by Lisa B. Thompson

Lisa B. Thompson explores the representation of black middle class female sexuality by African American women authors in narrative literature, drama, film, and popular culture, showing how these depictions reclaim black female agency and illustrate the difficulties black women confront in asserting sexual agency in the public sphere.

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Gendering the African Diaspora: Women, Culture, and Historical Change in the Caribbean and Nigerian Hinterland

This volume builds on and extends current discussions of the construction of gendered identities and the networks through which men and women engage diaspora. It considers the movement of people and ideas between the Caribbean and the Nigerian hinterland. The contributions examine Africa in the Caribbean imaginary, the way in which gender ideologies inform Caribbean men's and women's theoretical or real-life engagement with the continent, and the interactions and experiences of Caribbean travelers in Africa and Europe.

Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis

Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women’s rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger’s racism.

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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis.

Afro-Latin America : Black Lives, 1600-2000

Two-thirds of Africans, both free and enslaved, who came to the Americas from 1500 to 1870 came to Spanish America and Brazil. Yet Afro-Latin Americans have been excluded from narratives of their hemisphere’s history. George Reid Andrews redresses this omission by making visible the lives and labors of black Latin Americans in the New World.

The Fire This Time

National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin’s 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.
 

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