Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 187
Reviewers’ Recommendations
The department faculty members need to address gender inside and outside
the classroom, as well as in their relations with the Gender Studies program;
it was an important factor shaping the interactions and conflict
around the Black Atlantic Seminar. Indeed, significant changes seem to have
occurred since this review was initiated. In making final additions to this report,
the consultant found that Maultsby and Burnim were no longer listed
as faculty on the department’s Web site but are now listed as faculty in the
Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. Professor Valerie Grim remains
a faculty member in the Department of Afro-American Studies.
Staffing does seem as if it will be an issue in sustaining the master’s program.
University of California, Berkeley
The Project
Entitled “African Diaspora Studies, Multiculturalism, and Identity Construction:
The Development of a Comprehensive Multidisciplinary Framework,”
the Ford project at the University of California at Berkeley had two
primary components. The first involved the development of critical
methodologies and analytical frameworks for African American Studies,
particularly from an African diasporan perspective. The main institutional
platform for this portion of the project was the Department of African
American Studies new doctoral program, the initial year of which coincided
with the first year of the Ford funding. The second component of the
project involved the building and strengthening of networks within and
without the university, as well as the allocation of support for scholarly resources
on campus, technological and otherwise.
Although the unit itself is called the Department of African American
Studies, its new Ph.D. program has, by design, a decidedly African Diasporan
orientation; one distinguished by a strong Caribbeanist strain. In addition,
there has been a willingness to set this Diasporan focus within a
comparative analytical framework—that is, within one informed by the
recognition that the field of Diaspora Studies is not limited to scholarship