Higher Flight: Refocusing Black/Africana Studies for the 21st Century

In the open access book Higher Flight, pre-eminent scholar and activist James B. Stewart offers a much-needed critical assessment of the current state of Black/Africana studies in order to chart a path forward. In three equally groundbreaking sections, Stewart clarifies and refines the distinctive approaches that currently define the field; shows how creative production in particular can serve as a unique means of cultural analysis and political mobilization; and suggests how to restore the balance between intellectual inquiry and direct action in order to improve the actual lived experiences of people of African descent. Each section incorporates various forms of expression, including Stewart’s essays, speeches, and poems, and the book as a whole covers a vast range of figures, issues, and phenomena, from W.E.B, Du Bois to James Baldwin, from conscious hip-hop to the Black Lives Matter movement, from Hurricane Katrina to Covid-19, and very much in between.

Written with an accessible authoritativeness few Black/Africana scholar-activists can match, Stewart offers a must-read not only for researchers, but also for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students interested in Black/Africana studies, diaspora studies, ethnic studies, Black womanist/feminist studies, and American studies, as well as in African American history, culture, politics, economics, literature, and philosophy.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

James B. Stewart is Professor Emeritus of African and African American Studies at Penn State University, USA. He previously served as Vice Provost for Educational Equity and Director of the Black studies Program at Penn State, as President of the National Council for Black Studies, as President of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and as Editor of The Review of Black Political Economy. He has published numerous articles and books, including the field-defining Introduction to Black Studies: Transdisciplinary Approaches and Implications (1992) and Flight in Search of Vision (2004).