Pioneering the Social Sciences at the Periphery

This paper focuses on Howard University and a distinguished group of its scholars who, in the 1930s through 1950s across various fields of social science, broke away both from the mainstream U.S. disciplinary approaches of the time and from the institutional limitations of black universities to enga...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Krista Johnson
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Rosenberg & Sellier 2020-11-01
Series:Quaderni di Sociologia
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/qds/4064
Description
Summary:This paper focuses on Howard University and a distinguished group of its scholars who, in the 1930s through 1950s across various fields of social science, broke away both from the mainstream U.S. disciplinary approaches of the time and from the institutional limitations of black universities to engage in transformative scholarship and intellectual theorizing on race and empire in the United States and around the world. This paper roots the intellectual history of “the Howard School” in the institutional architecture they forged at Howard at the time. I argue that, as part of a larger effort to confront the coloniality of knowledge and forge an academic and activist decolonial agenda, the Howard scholars established institutions and academic spaces of knowledge production that were unique in the American academy in their organization, mission, vision and methods of research, and played a vital role in sustaining critiques and alternatives to mainstream thinking on race.
ISSN:0033-4952
2421-5848