• Contains original essays by expert contributors in the field of African-American Studies
  
• Creates a groundbreaking re-appraisal of the history and future of the field
  
• Includes a series of reflections from those who established African American Studies as a bona fide academic discipline
  
• Captures the dynamic interaction of African American Studies with other fields of inquiry.

“An excellent … resource … edited with an excellent introduction by Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon, which includes articles by a wide range of scholars that document the development of black studies in the United States and outline the trajectories of the field in all its multi-genre richness.” (Year's Work in English Studies, November 2008)

Lewis R. Gordon is the Laura Carnell University Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University and Ongoing Visiting Professor of Government and Philosophy at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He is the author of several books, including Her Majesty’s Other Children (1997), which won the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for Advancing Human Rights, and Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (2000).

Jane Anna Gordon teaches in the Department of Political Science at Temple University, where she is also an Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought. She is author of Why They Couldn’t Wait: A Critique of the Black–Jewish Conflict Over Community Control in Ocean Hill–Brownsville, 1967–1971 (2001), and co-editor, with Lewis R. Gordon, of Not Only the Master’s Tools: Theoretical Explorations in African-American Studies (2005).