Nathaniel Norment Jr - African American Studies: The Discipline and Its Dimensions

Rochelle Brock and Cynthia Dillard
Executive Editors

Vol. 110

The Black Studies and Critical Thinking series
is part of the Peter Lang Education list.
Every volume is peer reviewed and meets
the highest quality standards for content and production.

Nathaniel Norment, Jr.

African American Studies

The Discipline and Its Dimensions

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Norment, Nathaniel, author.
Title: African American studies: the discipline and its dimensions / Nathaniel Norment, Jr.
Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2019.
Series: Black studies and critical thinking, vol. 110 | ISSN 1947-5985 Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018038333 | ISBN 978-1-4331-6130-8 (hardback: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4331-6129-2 (paperback: alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4331-5937-4 (ebook pdf) ISBN 978-1-4331-5938-1 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-5939-8 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: African AmericansStudy and teaching.
African AmericansStudy and teachingHistory. | BlacksStudy and teaching. BlacksStudy and teachingHistory. | AfricaStudy and teaching.
AfricaStudy and teachingHistory. Classification: LCC E184.7 .N67 2019 | DDC 305.896/07307dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038333
DOI 10.3726/b14631

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

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About the author(s)/editor(s)

Nathaniel Norment, Jr. is the Director of the Writing Lab and Professor in the Department of English at Morehouse College. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at The City College of New York and the Department of African American Studies at Temple University. He is a former Chair and Graduate Director of African American Studies at Temple University where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in African American Studies and African American literature and culture. His publications include The African American Studies Reader (2001, 2007); Readings in African American Language: Aspects, Features and Perspectives (Vol. I 2003, Vol. II 2005); and The Addison Gayle, Jr. Reader (2009). Norment earned his B.S. at Ball State University, his M.S. at Saint Francis University, and his Ph.D. at Fordham University.

About the book

African American Studies: The Discipline and Its Dimensions is a comprehensive resource book that recounts the development of the discipline of African American Studies and provides a basic reference source for sixteen areas of knowledge of the discipline: anthropology, art, dance, economics, education, film, history, literature, music, philosophy, psychology, religion, sociology, political science, science and technology, sports and religion. African American Studies defines bodies of knowledge, methodologies, philosophies, disciplinary concepts, contents, scope, topics scholars have concerned themselves, as well as the growth, development, and present status of the discipline. African American Studies validates that African American Studies is a unique and significant disciplineone that intersects almost every academic discipline and cultural constructand confirms that the discipline has a noteworthy history and a challenging future. The various bodies of knowledge, the philosophical framework, methodological procedures, and theoretical underpinnings of the discipline have never been clearly delineated from an African-centered perspective.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR

African American Studies:
The Discipline and Its Dimensions

African American Studies: The Discipline and Its Dimensions (by Nathaniel Norment, Jr., a professor with decades of experience) is a roadmap to the evolution of Black Studies, past and future. He rends his way through the history and development of a complex and comprehensive account, connecting African American Studies to other bodies of knowledge to reveal and display the elusive underbelly and underpinnings of the discipline, exposing its variety of parts of the discipline and what they mean, painting the contours of the difference between Black Studies and the study of blackness while incorporating and integrating the multidiscipline. After poring over the manuscript in recent months, I can testify that it is a monumental snapshot of a fountain of knowledge as well as a new pedagogy for the elevation and empowerment of those who lost their roots in the tangled horror and mean and rushing waters of the Middle Passage to a strange land and corrosive centuries of enslavement and inhumane destruction as segregated and marginalized chattel. This book will bolster the academic and public appreciation of the history of the field and is likely to become the number one bible of African American studies, a multifaceted blueprint, for years to come.

NATHAN HARE, professor, sociologist, psychologist; the first person to coordinate/chair a Black Studies program at a U.S. university (San Francisco State University); co-founder of The Black Think Tank with Julia Hare and co-founder of The Black Scholar: A Journal of Black Studies and Research with Robert Chrisman

Nathaniel Norment, Jr has produced an impressively vital, thoroughly researched, and engagingly written overview of African American Studies. He illuminates the significant African American contributors to the development of Black culture, history, politics, and liberation movements with special focus on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. African American Studies: The Discipline and Its Dimensions explores and provides insights into Black life, struggles, creativity, and the endless social movements for freedom and justice. The impressive bibliography, primary documents, and profiles of African American leaders and creative artists will encourage readers to delve even deeper into the Black past and to participate in the continuing quest for freedom and justice. This textbook places African American Studies on a solid foundation and insures its continuation as a dynamic field of intellectual inquiry.

DARLENE CLARK HINE, John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of History, Michigan State University

African American Studies: The Discipline and Its Dimensions is a rare text with as much depth as breadth. It stands alone as a comprehensive guide to the history, present and future of the fields of African American and Africana Studies and is a highly readable, engaging indispensable resource for teachers, students and the all others who want to better understand the breathtakingly interdisciplinary contributions of Black Studies to higher education and the world at large.