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iBlack Studies Database: A Convening

Convening Participants. Seated at table from left: Carole Boyce Davies (hand to head), Josephine B. Bradley, Mónica Carrillo, Stanlie M. James (head turned), Dorothy Randall Tsuruta (partially seen), Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, Warren C. Whatley, Charles E. Jones, James B. Stewart, and Summer L. Melay. Seated away from table: Tiamoyo Karenga

Welcome to iBlack Studies Database: A Convening

 

This database contains archival materials from the 2006 Ford Foundation convening entitled “Conversations for Sustaining Black Studies in the 21stCentury: A Convening”. The site includes: access to 9 videos that captured the moment by moment conversations between ideologically diverse scholars and key proponents of the field, 2006 biographical sketches of those 27 scholars, their original responses to nine questions regarding the history of and possible directions for the field, a PDF of the 2008 published version of International Journal of Africana Studies special issue, "Sustaining Black Studies in the 21st Century," and other related archival materials associated with the two-day event. Each recording contains intense frank discussions by participants whose contributions to the study and perpetuation of knowledge about the Black experience are important to our understanding of the creation, institutionalization and ways of sustaining the field.

 

The “A Convening” section of the site will also include an exhibit based around the participants and their ideas for sustaining the field and their contributions for developing the field. Finally, a Scalar, iBlack Studies: Introduction to Black Studies, book will be built around this and other materials including previously published materials on the Black experience.

 

The iBlack Studies Database is designed to add additional sites and materials important to an understanding of the history, culture and experiences of Blacks in the African Diaspora.