Africana Studies
Your Subject Librarian
169 College Ave
Related Guides
Welcome
This guide presents relevant research resources on Africana Studies which includes the interdisciplinary study of the cultures, experiences and conditions in Africa, and the African Diaspora, including the Americas. The Alexander Library, on College Avenue Campus, houses resources on Africana studies, specifically in the areas of history and literature, government documents, and social sciences. As you'll see in this guide, there are also important collections beyond Alexander Library, including at Douglass Library which has resources on Women, Gender & Sexuality studies and Performing Arts, the Art library, and Dana Library in Newark with special collections in Jazz Studies and Rutgers Black history.
Don't hesitate to get in touch if you have questions or need some additional guidance. My contact info is in the panel to the left.
New Books on Black & Africana Study
Library Catalogs
- QuickSearch--Basic
A search interface that covers materials available from the Rutgers libraries. Includes the complete physical collections of the Rutgers Libraries and most, but not all, of its electronic resources.
- QuickSearch--Advanced
Searches Rutgers libraries holdings but allows Boolean searches and provides facets limiting by format, date, language, etc. Strongly recommended for more effective searching.
- WorldCat
Global catalog of library collections allowing researchers to identify materials beyond Rutgers collections.
-
Collective Africana Materials Project: the Center for Research Libraries also has a collection of Collective Africana Materials Project (CAMP) which is a shared collection of archives concerning the nearly fifty nations of Sub-Saharan Africa. CAMP acquires and preserves materials in microform and digital formats. CAMP collects newspapers, journals, government publications, personal and corporate archives, and the personal papers of scholars and government leaders. CAMP's materials are in many African and European languages, including Swahili, Portuguese, French, Zulu, Xhosa, English, and German.
- Center for Research Libraries
Houses millions of volumes of research materials that are rarely held in North American libraries (including foreign dissertations and newspapers). Because Rutgers is a member of the Center, materials are available to Rutgers users via interlibrary loan or by onsite visits to the reading room in Chicago
Requesting Materials
The libraries offer a variety of options for Rutgers faculty, staff, and students to obtain books and other materia
- Find, Access, and Request Library Materials
The Rutgers libraries main site for information about and access to request services.
- EZBorrow and UBorrow - These services allow Rutgers faculty, staff, and students to request books from partner libraries in PALCI and the Big Ten and receive them normally within 5-7 days.
- Request a Scan or Digital Copy - The request options within QuickSearch allow faculty, staff, and students to request digital copies of book chapters and articles that Rutgers only owns in print format.
- Interlibrary Loan - For books not owned by Rutgers (or missing or checked out) it is advisable to try E-ZBorrow or UBorrow first. But if a book is not available through either of those services, then try Interlibrary Loan. While E-ZBorrow draws on the holdings of nearby academic libraries, Interlibrary Loan draws on thousands of academic and public libraries around the country. Electronic delivery of articles in journals not owned by Rutgers is also available through Interlibrary loan. Use the Log in to ILLiad option to place your request.
General Library Resources
Below are some options for receiving anything from immediate reference support to scheduling a research consultation with a librarian
- Chat Reference
A chat reference service is available 24/7 reference support. To access it, click on the chat box with 3 dots toward the right side of the library home page.
- Ask a Librarian
Ask a Librarian is the Rutgers Libraries virtual reference service, Send in questions about library holdings, research strategies, elusive citations, policies, hours, etc., and get an answer--within 24-48 hours, except on weekends and holidays, and often faster.
- Subject Librarians Directory
A complete listing and contact information for subject librarians on all of the Rutgers campuses. The Rutgers libraries have subject specialists in many disciplines in the Humanities--Art, Classics, Comparative Literature, Film Studies, French, German, History, Italian, Music, Philoosophy, Religion, Spanish & Portuguese, and Women's Studies.
Reference Material
BlackPast.org: BlackPast is an encyclopedic database dedicated to providing reliable information on the history of Black people and ancestry across the globe, and especially in North America.
-
Africana
by
ISBN: 0195170555Publication Date: 2005-04-07Ninety years after W.E.B. Du Bois first articulated the need for "the equivalent of a black Encyclopedia Britannica," Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr., realized his vision by publishing Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience in 1999. This new, greatly expanded edition of the original work broadens the foundation provided by Africana. Including more than one million new words, Africana has been completely updated and revised. New entries on African kingdoms have been added, bibliographies now accompany most articles, and the encyclopedia's coverage of the African diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean has been expanded, transforming the set into the most authoritative research and scholarly reference set on the African experience ever created. More than 4,000 articles cover prominent individuals, events, trends, places, political movements, art forms, business and trade, religion, ethnic groups, organizations and countries on both sides of the Atlantic. African American history and culture in the present-day United States receive a strong emphasis, but African American history and culture throughout the rest of the Americas and their origins in African itself have an equally strong presence. The articles that make up Africana cover subjects ranging from affirmative action to zydeco and span over four million years from the earlies-known hominids , to Sean "Diddy" Combs. With entries ranging from the African ethnic groups to members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Africana, Second Edition, conveys the history and scope of cultural expression of people of African descent with unprecedented depth. -
African American Culture
by
ISBN: 9781440862441Publication Date: 2020-07-23Covering everything from sports to art, religion, music, and entrepreneurship, this book documents the vast array of African American cultural expressions and discusses their impact on the culture of the United States.According to the latest census data, less than 13 percent of the U.S. population identifies as African American; African Americans are still very much a minority group. Yet African American cultural expression and strong influences from African American culture are common across mainstream American culture--in music, the arts, and entertainment; in education and religion; in sports; and in politics and business. African American Culture: An Encyclopedia of People, Traditions, and Customs covers virtually every aspect of African American cultural expression, addressing subject matter that ranges from how African culture was preserved during slavery hundreds of years ago to the richness and complexity of African American culture in the post-Obama era.The most comprehensive reference work on African American culture to date, the multivolume set covers such topics as black contributions to literature and the arts, music and entertainment, religion, and professional sports. It also provides coverage of less-commonly addressed subjects, such as African American fashion practices and beauty culture, the development of jazz music across different eras, and African American business. -
The African American National Biography
by
ISBN: 9780195160192Publication Date: 2008-02-18The African American National Biography presents history through a mosaic of the lives of thousands of individuals, illuminating the abiding influence of persons of African descent on the life of this nation from the arrival of Esteban in Spanish Florida in 1529 through to notable black citizens of the present day. Available initially as a handsome eight-volume set containing over 4,000 entries written and signed by distinguished scholars, the AANB continues to grow along with the field of African American biographical research, and continuous updates to the online edition will bring the total number of lives profiled to more than 5,000. This is a remarkable achievement, an eightfold increase over the number of biographies contained in 2004's award-winning and substantial African American Lives. In addition to Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr., the AANB includes a wide range of African Americans from all time periods and all walks of life, both famous and nearly-forgotten. In the words of AANB editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "These stories, long buried in the dusty archives of history, will never be lost again. And that is what scholarship in the field of African American Studies should be all about." -
Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History
by
ISBN: 9780028658162Publication Date: 2005-12-16Users looking for authoritative and comprehensive information about black history, figures and accomplishments now have a defining and current reference to address their needs. The second edition of the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History is a much-needed expansion of the 1996 classic and its 2000 supplement. As with the earlier publications, the second edition is aimed at high school and college students, as well as the general reader. Whereas the first edition focused almost exclusively on the United States, this new set identifies and addresses broad themes critical to understanding the texture of the cultures, achievements, challenges and comprise North America, Central and South America and the Caribbean. Readers can find comparative analyses of social movements, languages, religions and family structures in the context of an interdisciplinary framework that fills a substantial gap in studies of this genre. While many articles from the original set have updated content and bibliographies, almost half of the second edition is composed of completely new scholarship. -
Encyclopedia of Black Studies
by
ISBN: 9780761927624Publication Date: 2004-12-09The Encyclopedia of Black Studies is the leading reference source for dynamic and innovative research on the Black experience. The concept for the encyclopedia was developed from the successful Journal of Black Studies (SAGE) and contains a full analysis of the economic, political, sociological, historical, literary, and philosophical issues related to Americans of African descent. This single-volume reference is the vanguard of the recent explosive growth in quality scholarship in the field. More than a chronicle of black culture or black people, this encyclopedia deals with the emergence and maturity of an intellectual field over the past four decades. Beginning with the protests at San Francisco State College in 1967 that led to the first degree-granting department of Black Studies. -
-
The SAGE Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America
by
ISBN: 9781452258218Publication Date: 2015-08-04The Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America provides an accessible ready reference on the retention and continuity of African culture within the United States. Our conceptual framework holds, first, that culture is a form of self-knowledge and knowledge about self in the world as transmitted from one person to another. Second, that African people continuously create their own cultural history as they move through time and space. Third, that African-descended people living outside of Africa are also contributors to and participants in the creation of African cultural history. Entries focus on illuminating Africanisms (cultural retentions traceable to an African origin) and cultural continuities (ongoing practices and processes through which African culture continues to be created and formed). Thus, the focus is more culturally specific and less concerned with the broader transatlantic demographic, political and geographic issues that are the focus of similar recent reference works. We also focus less on biographies of individuals and political and economic ties and more on processes and manifestations of African cultural heritage and continuity. FEATURES: A two-volume A-to-Z work, available in a choice of print or electronic formats 350 signed entries, each concluding with Cross-references and Further Readings 150 figures and photos Front matter consisting of an Introduction and a Reader's Guide organizing entries thematically to more easily guide users to related entries Signed articles concluding with cross-references
