UKPOKODU, PH.D

Creating New Knowledge: An African Digital Humanities by Peter Ukpokodu, Ph.D. Full Professor The University of Kansas Department of African & African-American Studies

Since its founding, Black studies as a discipline has always reinvigorated its epistemic raison d’etre with an infusion of sharp scholarship, insightful pedagogy, and altruistic cultural communal service. Its beginnings were bold and assertive, and the early founders of the discipline were unsurpassed in matching their vision with praxis. Black cultural affirmation and service to the community matched intellectual and didactic rigor and dedication, and both were pursued with unparalleled energy even at the risk of the founders’ academic self-immolation. It was a victorious revolution whose aftermath unleashed creative energies that could be linked to preceding or contemporaneous generation in which, for example, Maulana Karenga’s robust intellect and irrepressible spirit brought forth the immortal and inimitable Kwanzaa that is now recognized worldwide as it takes its place among cultural festivals and holidays, and the phenomenon now simply referred to as “Harlem’s Golden Age” or the “Harlem Renaissance” (Lewis, 1981, p. xi) also emerged. It is this spirit of always seeking to extend the intellectual and civic horizons of the Black experience that has continued to serve as the trampoline from which Black studies continues to leap to disciplinary excellence even as it rejuvenates itself. This is where the Department of African and African-American Studies at the University of Kansas (KU) has made, and continues to make, solid disciplinary contributions. In an earlier decade, scholars from KU, among others, examined the state of Black studies and proposed areas for development in the 21st century. One of the strident calls in their publication African Studies for the 21st Century, edited by Gordon (2004), was for Black studies programs to seek departmental status that would provide them with a faculty core, especially at the undergraduate level, meaning their staff would be devoted to the discipline instead of representing a collection of faculty whose primary allegiance is to their non-Black-studies home departments where they are tenured and promoted, and where their salaries and merit pay increases are often determined (Gordon, 2004, pp. 83–93). As well-meaning as they might be in regard to the advancement of Black studies, that discipline would only be of secondary

importance at best. It was salutary to the progress in Black studies that a good number of programs followed the advice and became departments. Of course, this shift did not occur without struggle. What would Black studies be without struggle? For a discipline forged for the most part in the crucibles of the 1960s and 1970s, the struggle continues. “A luta continua!” is the common experiential expression. In an earlier decade, I had also argued in an article, “Welfare Reform and the Black Community: Reasserting Communal Solidarity Through Moral, Economic and Residential Strategies,” published in the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy (Ukpokodu, 1998, pp. 35–39) that Black businesses (including those of celebrities) should work cooperatively to build low-rent houses in Black communities that had been disproportionately and negatively affected by President Clinton’s welfare reform. It is heartwarming that the vision that seemed far-fetched then is now being implemented on some fronts by wealthy African Americans. Just before the year of COVID-19 (it seems that such events might in the future be referred to as “BC-19”— “Before COVID-19”) and continuing since then, African and AfricanAmerican Studies at KU had heeded the call to bridge the digital divide not only within America but between America and the Black world, especially Africa. It is terrifying that within America, Black voters who are digitally illiterate may be unable to fully participate in democracy. If the current electoral reforms and processes being carried out in some states come to fruition, digitally illiterate Black voters, minorities, and poor whites could be disenfranchised. At the international level, African and African-American Studies at KU has taken a big step in establishing an African digital humanities tenure-track faculty position to complement the existing digital humanities program. It has been said that African and African-American Studies at KU may be the first and, some say, the only department in the U.S. and in the world to have an African digital humanities program. It is our hope that if KU is the pace-setter here, other Black studies departments may soon follow without delay. The establishment of an African digital humanities program at KU is in the spirit of the founding principles of the National Council of Black Studies that implore us to retain and maintain the link that acts as the umbilical cord that tethers people of the Black Diaspora to their African genesis. It might be important to interject here that KU has an ongoing History of Black Writing Project under the directorship of Maryemma Graham, who is a distinguished African American professor of literature in the English Department. The African digital humanities program complements that initiative in reaching Africa, the African Diaspora, and the entire world. Furthermore, an African digital humanities program helps to centralize our discipline in occurrences in the world to which Black people have made enormous contributions intellectually, politically, and economically. By its establishment, the discipline strives to play a significant and immediate role in timely participation, response, interaction, and intervention in urgent matters, some of them ontological, that define who we are and the world we live in. As some parts of the world are threatened by a new wave of militarism and rabid nationalism, the Black world must be of immediate reach to our discipline as we help to define humanism. The support we provide is both intellectual and moral. As the struggle, our struggle, the struggle of Black people continues in protests and pickets with signs and banners proclaiming, “I am a man [human being],” we are linked with our ancestral lineage that proclaimed our people’s humanity in the face of daunting inhumanity over the ages and generations. This struggle is an affirmation of the humanity of all peoples of the world, a shared humanity as captivatingly articulated by Publius Terentius Afer, mainly referred to as Terence, a former Roman slave of African (Berber) descent, who had been brought to Rome by a Roman Senator, Terentius Lucanus, and later freed

by him to become a famous playwright around 170 BC: “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto” (“I am a man [human being]; nothing human is alien to me”; Terence, n.d.). Great African American leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis had bequeathed a similar sense of humanism that defines our existence to our generation. We hear it in the cry of “Black Lives Matter” worldwide, and of “#endSARS” in Nigeria. An African digital humanities is the newest innovation that furthers our goal of retaining and transmitting that sense of the “personal immortality” and “collective immortality” (Mbiti, 1990, p. 158) of our African essence in what John S. Mbiti calls the cardinal expression of the relationship between our individual selves and our collective, communal ethos: “I am, because we are; and since we are, therefore I am” (Mbiti, 1990, p. 106). We must not underestimate the role of an African digital humanities in galvanizing people, both to share our stories, our desires, our sociopolitical successes and failures and, when necessary, to plant the seed of revolt, and to counter misinformation while providing true and correct information for everyone to see. Truth—that conformity of the intellect with reality—still exists in an age of Trumpian “alternative truths” and QAnon conspiracy theories. We must also not be limited as a Black people in gaining access to national and global jobs advertised only on digital platforms. Some unemployed Blacks do not readily know where the jobs are even at a time when it is said that there are more jobs available than there are people to take them. An African digital humanities, linked with current and emerging social platforms, would help the Black world to participate fully in our democratic institutions and processes by speaking to and for ourselves and about ourselves and the Black world to others instead of allowing others to speak to and for us. We have a voice, and we must share it with the voiceless and teach people how to use it effectively. It would also fully equip the National Council of Black Studies, as an umbrella organization that shares opinions on intellectual and activist matters and protection of Black programs, to maintain its bold leadership. The more an African digital humanities program maintains a presence in Black units across many institutions, the more fulfillment it brings to the mission of the National Council of Black Studies. It also brings a united Black front to confront anti-Black racism that plays out in current and emerging digital platforms. It makes disciples of us all, enabling us to go to the whole world and spread the good news of Black intellection. How do we go about establishing an African digital humanities initiative within a Black studies department? For departments (or units with affiliated African studies centers) that take part in the Federal Department of Education Title VI grant competition, it helps to include a faculty position with expertise in digital humanities on the proposal and in the grant budget. It is important to make this a tenure-track position so that when the grant ends, the institution takes over the responsibility of continuing the position’s funding. Because we are in the digital age, there would be no problem in attracting students to courses and activities related to an African digital humanities. Thus, the production of student credit hours and the money the course enrollments bring would make the program sustainable and perhaps profitable to the institution. Black studies departments could also seek funding from corporations and foundations. There may be initial rejections, but it is good to remember that persistence pays off. No unit should be dismayed by initial failures. Keep seeking, keep knocking on doors, and keep asking. Aren’t we used to the fact that nothing comes easy for us? Where would we be as a people in the Black Diaspora if our forefathers and foremothers and our founding fathers and mothers gave up? Would we be free? Would we have been allowed to participate in the democratic process and define our being? Through existentialism, we know that freedom is not a bed of roses. A Black studies department could also request a faculty position in Black digital humanities from the

institution during the regular annual budget proposal. One is not likely to get it at the first request. The key is to keep bringing the position up as a priority every year until it is funded. Collaborating with the Humanities Center of your institution and with other well-meaning departments for the position might also work. If you do get approval to open a search for a Black digital humanities faculty position, do not hesitate to join the committee, and even to serve as the search committee chair. Reach out to other Black studies departments in other institutions for advice and help as necessary. By seeking new ways to extend the frontiers of knowledge and to continue to maintain and build upon what the founders of the discipline fought for, and in some cases, died for (as at the University of Kansas, where a student died), our generation bears witness that the sufferings and tears were not in vain. The burden we bear, and the honor we bestow on the founders and pioneers of the discipline, is to keep improving on Black studies and to firmly support each Black program in every institution in its effort to survive. In that manner, we will maintain for present and future generations the collective immortality of Black studies.

References

Gordon, J. U. (Ed). (2004). African studies for the 21st century. Nova Science Publishers. Lewis, D. L. (1981). When Harlem was in vogue. Oxford University Press. Mbiti, J. S. (1990). African religions & philosophy. Heinemann Educational Publishers. Terrence. Homo sum humani nihil a me alienum puto. Retrieved November 30, 2021 from https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/552720-homo-sum-humani-nihil-a-me-alienum-putoI-am Ukpokodu, P. (1998). Welfare reform and the Black community: Reasserting communal solidarity through moral, economic and residential strategies. In Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, 4, 35–39.