African, African American and Black Studies

Henry “Box” Brown was a former slave who escaped slavery by shipping himself in a box from a slave state to a free state. But in some sense, he remained in a box- the fugitive slave act threatened his freedom. In this lecture, “The Box” is used as a metaphor Read more

This is the fifth and final lecture in the AFRO 490 lecture series. This lecture focuses on the some of the questions raised by debates in African American history. What is debate? What is a great African American debate? Abdul Alkalimat argues there were three great debates- the Emancipation Debate, Read more

This is the fourth lecture in the AFRO 490 series. This lecture talks about the role of tradition within ideological frameworks and also in the political culture of everyday life. It covers the origins of African American food, names, speech, hair and stories. View this on-demand online course from the Read more

This is the second lecture in the AFRO 490 series. Alkalimat talks about methods for production of thought in Black studies. He outlines them as epistemology, sociology, history and comparative. He then talks about the D-7 approach to answering questions. This approach involves defining the problem, gathering data, digitizing information, Read more

This is the third lecture in the AFRO 490 series. This lecture aims to answer two questions. First, what is history? What has been the history of the African American experience? Second, can people create a theory of Black history, and if so, how? It talks about the Eurocentrist traditional Read more

This is the first of a five part lecture series on the theory of Black Studies. This first lecture covers the history of Black Studies, Communist and Socialist thought. Abdul Alkalimat talks about the history of black studies in America, the paradigm shift that occurred when Malcolm X delivered his Read more