Of Du Bois and Diaspora: The challenge of African American Studies

This article explores the role African American Studies has played in responding to the quandary of multiple consciousness as initially outlined by Du Bois, arguing that the origins of African American Studies were informal but nonetheless incisive in its analysis, as can be see in such works as David Walker's Appeal. When taken as a hemispheric phenomenon (as opposed to a North American boundedness), certain fundamental themes reoccur in both the informal and the subsequent formal scholarship, such as the condition of exploitative labor extraction, the relationship to Africa, and the transnational linkages and meanings of the diasporic experience. The article ends with a call to marry prescription and praxis.