Professor Toyin Falola’s proposition for African Ancestral Studies (AAS) in Higher Education: A historical assessment of its implications & applicability to the Diaspora

• In Event: Situating Academic Strategies in Higher Education

Abstract

This paper discusses a recent proposition by Professor Toyin Falola for an African Ancestral Studies’ higher educational curriculum of study. In assessing this proposition, this paper recalls and demonstrates that the proposition fits into a tradition of African intellectual resistance and conceptualization, which envisions an African cultural renaissance that may exert a salutary impact upon a historic rupture in African cultural continuity. What are the prospects for an embrace of the proposed African Ancestral Studies curriculum of study by African universities? The paper also weighs the feasibility and applicability to the African Diaspora of an African Ancestral Studies program of study.

Author

• Victor Okafor, Eastern Michigan University