Teaching Introduction to Africana Studies: Sustaining a Disciplinary Focus

In the American academy, there is quite possibly no other discipline with the history of (Black) Africana Studies. Founded on the idea of struggle and resistance and eventually becoming the intellectual arm of the Black Power movement, the field has for decades institutionalized and established itself as a cogent and coherent academic discipline. The flagship course for the discipline has always been the introductory course from the field's inception. One of the central questions that loom in many Africana circles concerns building egalitarian consensus on the teaching of the introductory course. This work seeks to address that issue by offering plausible guidelines for instructors and practitioners to follow.