Afrotopia
The Roots of African American Popular History

A study of Afrocentrism since the eighteenth-century, with particular attention to popular mythologies.

Wilson Jeremiah Moses (Author)

9780521479417, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 September 1998

328 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.455 kg

"...a first rate book on African American intellectual history that explains a great deal about black historiographic thinking, both academic and popular,today,and is highly recommended." Gerald Early, Journal of World History

Afrocentrism and its history has long been disputed and controversial. In this important book, Wilson Moses presents a critical and nuanced view of the issues. Tracing the origins of Afrocentrism since the eighteenth century, he examines the combination of various popular mythologies, some of them mystical and sentimental, others perfectly reasonable. This is a rich history of black intellectual life and the concept of race.

1. Introduction
2. Varieties of black historicism
3. From superman to man
4. Progress, providence, and civilization: Crummell, Douglass, and others
5. W. E. B. Du Bois: modernism and antimodernism
6. William H. Ferris
7. Afrocentrism versus relativism
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary theory [DSA]