Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

82 Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States
the same institution and also serves on the Executive Council of the Association
for the Study of African American Life and History.
Dr. Hine was then John A. Hannah Professor of History at Michigan
State; she is now interim chair of the department and director of the Center
for African American Studies at Northwestern University. The late Dr.
McKay was professor of American and Afro-American Literature at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, and former Director of African American
Studies. 2 Hine and McKay have been central to the emergence of Black
Women’s Studies, especially in the fields of history and American literature.
Hine has served as president both of the Organization of American Historians
and of the Southern Historical Association.
Three Essays: Black Studies in the United States differs from the Huggins
report in important ways. Its three authors represent the interdisciplinary
nature of the field as well as its regional and geographical diversity. It
compiles three points of view: an historical essay, an overview of the field,
and an evaluation of a specific region and its institutions.
Although Harris, Hine, and McKay set out to evaluate diverse centers,
departments, and institutions with the intention of keeping the report confidential
(as would be necessary if it were to contain an honest assessment),
many within the field expressed interest in the findings, and the foundation
decided to publish a general report.
Robert Harris’s essay “The Intellectual and Institutional Development
of Africana Studies” continues to be one of the most extensive statements
about the history of the field; it ought to be more widely known and
accessible. The essay makes two important contributions:
1. Harris opens with a comprehensive definition of Africana Studies
as a field that stretches beyond African, African American, and
Black Studies, outlining the key themes with which the field has
been concerned.
2. Where Huggins provides the postwar historical and political context
for the emergence of Black Studies on White campuses, Harris takes
the long view, offering an intellectual genealogy of the field. He
identifies four stages in the development of the field from the last