In I986 when Sara Berry and I organized a graduate seminar on 'Agriculture in African History', our search of the literature for the reading list yielded primarily works of social and economic history for which agriculture was, to greater or lesser degree, a touchstone rather than a primary focus.
Afrocentricity is a paradigm based on the idea that African people should reassert
a sense of agency in order to achieve sanity. During the l960s a group of African
American intellectuals in the newly-formed Black Studies departments at universities
began to formulate novel ways of analyzing information. In some cases, these new
Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) is a humane period piece but not at all a permanent narrative fiction. I first (and, until now, last) read it when it was published and I was eighteen. More than sixty years later, I have gotten through it again but only just. Its humane sentiments remain admirable but