Title VI and African Studies: Prospects in a Polycentric Academic Landscape

Abstract

In 1996, the Ford Foundation and the African Studies Association published African Studies in the United States: A Perspective by Jane Guyer, a noted economic anthropologist and then-program director at Northwestern University.' In that commissioned volume, Guyer outlined, as she saw them, three distinct eras of African studies in the United States. She also collected and analyzed data about the production of knowledge concerning Africa, specifically numbers of doctorates in key disciplines, linkages to African institutions, and intellectual trends in scholarship. The data and perspectives she presented reflected the situation in African studies in the first half of the 1990s and sought to endorse the Ford Foundation funding initiative "Strengthening African Studies."2 The purpose of this article is to revisit the question almost a decade later and in particular to reflect upon the specific role of federally funded area studies programs (i.e., Title VI) in the study of Africa. In what ways can we expect federally funded programs in area studies to lead or influence the production of knowledge about Africa in either institutional or intellectual terms in the next decades?