Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 205
can Studies will increasingly have to incorporate an international perspective.
The inevitable redefinition of African American Studies in the wake of
a broadening of one’s sense of the term “America” will play a key role in that
conceptual reorientation. The African American Studies project funded by
Ford at the University of Pennsylvania appears to constitute an ambitious
step in that direction.
In the short term, the Ford seminars have reinforced interinstitutional
ties between Penn and Princeton. (Note that there is already an agreement
in place that allows their graduate students to take a limited number of
courses at both universities.) To a lesser extent, the Ford project has similarly
nurtured such ties among the several local schools whose faculty
members attended the seminars. The move to develop a“transnational perspective”
that informed the seminars has likely had an impact on faculty
and graduate students research projects and approaches to teaching. However,
the long-term impact of the Ford project is unclear. There are no readily
apparent sources of funds that would permit the schools to continue to
convene these seminars.
African American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania
The field of African American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania is
institutionalized in two ways. First, there is the Afro-American Studies
(AAS) Program, an interdepartmental degree-granting unit created in 1970
that administers a major and minor in the field. At the time of the review,
the head of the program was Herman Beavers (English). Because Afro-
American Studies does not have departmental status, its primary activities
involve mounting courses and generating special programs.And while it appears
to have no formal links with the Center for the Study of Black Literature
and Culture (CSBLAC) on campus, it co-sponsors CSBLAC guest
lectures and other events (for example, a graduate student conference).
CSBLAC was established in 1987 and was designed to serve as the institutional
nexus for research in African American Studies at the university.
Some of its early success was underwritten by a grant from the Xerox Foundation
in 1988 that funded a symposium and a summer program for high