Higher Flight

James B. Stewart is Professor Emeritus of African and African American Studies at Penn State University, USA. He previously served as Vice Provost for Educational Equity and Director of the Black studies Program at Penn State, as President of the National Council for Black Studies, as President of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and as Editor of The Review of Black Political Economy. He has published numerous articles and books, including the field-defining Introduction to Black Studies: Transdisciplinary Approaches and Implications (1992) and Flight in Search of Vision (2004).

Higher Flight is a sequel well worth the wait. Stewart courageously interrogates the in-vogue poststructuralism of contemporary Africana Studies research by recentering the incongruency between conceptual analyses and the social scientific data concerning Black Americans. In chapter after chapter, James B. Stewart overwhelms the reader with his transdisciplinary competence. Higher Flight studies Black folk through a masterful weaving of philosophy, aesthetics, economics, sociology, and history. A tapestry emerges under the force of Stewart’s pen—a text detailing the nuance and complexity of Black life and death, rather than the interpretive predetermination of Blackness commonly produced through Eurocentric theories. Stewart’s book is a timely commentary on the future of Black/Africana Studies and the role theoretical innovations such as Africana womanism, Black Male Studies, and Afrocentricity have in empowering Black people throughout the 21st century.

• IntroductionForgotten Trees? Introduction Part 1: Transdisciplinary Theoretical and Methodological Trajectories1.Pursuit of Knowledge? 2.Prologue3.Du Bois’s The Negro and Contemporary Black/Africana Studies4.Black/Africana Studies, Then and Now: Reconstructing a Century of Intellectual Inquiry and Political Engagement, 1915-20155.Art, Politics, Cultural Studies, and Post-Structuralist Philosophy in Black/Africana Studies: Deciphering Complex Relationships Part 2: In Search of Progressive Cultural Production6.Streaming to Nowhere7.Prologue 8.Neutering the Black Power Movement: The Hijacking of Protest Symbolism9.“Until Justice Rolls Down Like Water and Righteousness like a Mighty Stream: The Celebration of 10.Black Life in the Music of Mausiki Scales and the Common Ground Collective11.“I Think We Killed Bigfoot”-- Conscious Rap Music in the Pacific Northwest: Introducing “The Rhetorician”12.No More Water, The Fire This Time! Channeling James Baldwin’s Perspectives on History and Identity to Pursue Racial Equity in the 21st Century 13.Does Anyone Know My Name? Resurrecting the Artistic Activism of Paul RobesonPart 3: Advancing the Global Liberation Struggle14.Social Inactivism (poem)15.Reparations Now!!! (poem)16.Prologue17.Onward Africana Women Warriors!18.The Institutional Decimation of Black Males: A Trans-Atlantic Perspective19.Resocializing Gang Bangers: A Comprehensive Strategy to Promote Violence Reduction and Community Reintegration20.Globalizing Black Identity: Challenges and Possibilities for Developing Liberatory Coalitions21.Still Seeking Forty Acres and a Mule: Tracking the Global Reparations Movement22.Showdown at the Crossroads?: Technology Development, Cyberspace, Liberation, and Identity Construction23.Searching for Wakanda: Understanding and Mastering Liberatory TechnologiesConclusionA Higher Flight to Liberation: Don’t Let Them Clip Our Wings!