Description
Book SynopsisThis study examines the role of race in the construction of history and the validation of knowledge. Using Martin Bernal''s Black Athena and its critiques as an entrée into the historical inquiries of African American intellectuals and many of their African counterparts, Keita engages the contested legacy of writing history in America. Ranging from 1700 BCE to the late twentieth century, he offers a new perspective on the challenge of building new historiographies and epistemologies.
Trade ReviewThis useful book, which is a significant contribution to Oxford University Press's Race and American Culture series, is a sophisticated defense of Afrocentrism...Indeed, Keita's analysis of Snowden's paradoxes and ironies is a substantial contribution to our existing knowledge...This excellent work complements but does not supercede older works by Wilson Jeremiah Moses and Stephen Howe-neither of whom, surprisingly, is cited in Keita's book. Nevertheless, Race and the Writing of History should be must reading for professional historians. * History: Review of New Books *
Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. Race and Historiography ; 2. Blackness in Ancient History: Criticism and Critique ; 3. Historiography and Black Historians ; 4. Carter G. Woodson ; 5. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ; 6. William Leo Hansberry ; 7. Frank M. Snowden, Jr. ; 8. Through a Glass Darkly: Afrocentrism ; 9. The Thesis and Its Refinement ; 10. Reprise: Conclusion by Way of Continuity