African Studies Association

Not to be confused with African Studies Association of the United Kingdom.
African Studies Association
Formation1957
HeadquartersNew Brunswick, New Jersey
Membership
2000
President
Gretchen Bauer
Websitehttps://www.africanstudies.org/

The African Studies Association (ASA) is a US-based association of scholars, students, practitioners, and institutions with an interest in the continent of Africa. Founded in 1957, the ASA is the leading organization of African Studies in North America, with a global membership of approximately 2000.[1] The association's headquarters are at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The ASA holds annual conferences[2] and virtual events for its members year-round.

As a result of racial and political disputes over exclusion from leadership positions of black academics and ASA leaders' ties with the US intelligence and military in the mid-twentieth century, the ASA split in 1968, when the Black Caucus of the ASA, led by John Henrik Clarke, founded the African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA).[3][4][5]

The ASA is different from the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA), which was founded at the University of Cape Town in October 1-2, 2012.[6]

  1. ^ "About the ASA".
  2. ^ "Annual Meeting". African Studies Association Portal – ASA – ASA. Retrieved 2022-09-14.
  3. ^ "Supporting exploration, education and preservation". ahsa50.org. African Heritage Studies Association. 2022. Retrieved 7 January 2023. The African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA) was founded in 1969 as an association of scholars of African descent, dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and academic presentation of the heritage of African people on the ancestral soil of Africa and in the diaspora.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference co was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Wiley, David (2013). "Militarizing Africa and African Studies and the U.S. Africanist Response". African Studies Review. 55 (2): 147–161. doi:10.1353/arw.2012.0041. ISSN 0002-0206.
  6. ^ "African Studies Association of Africa - ASAA - About ASAA". as-aa.org. Retrieved 2023-01-07.