Founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1969 by Robert Chrisman and Nathan Hare, THE BLACK SCHOLAR (TBS) is the first journal of Black studies and research. TBS is the first modern Black studies and research journal and is currently the leading such journal in the United States. Founded on the premise that Black writers, scholars, activists and artists could participate in dialogue within its pages, TBS‘s primary mission has been to chronicle, analyze, and debate the conditions and the emancipatory efforts of Black people, across class, nationality, gender, generation, sexuality, and ideology. Due in part to the impact of the journal, Black Studies, Africana Studies, Diaspora Studies, and other subdisciplines have become legitimate spaces of scholarly inquiry. However, there are still few public intellectual spaces that are dedicated to the new multiplicity of Black perspectives (or perspectives on race) that have emerged through these disciplines and that engage with the new issues and concerns facing Black communities worldwide. THE BLACK SCHOLAR is one of those spaces. Our rich mix of the scholarly and the artistic, the professional and the public/non-specialist, remains rare, as is our openness to different forms and techniques of political engagement.
In June 2012, TBS relaunched with new editors, and new active and advisory boards. It is now peer reviewed and published, since 2015, four times a year through Routledge (Taylor & Francis).
The current revitalization of TBS‘s aims is largely an updating of its initial vision, though motivated to participate in a global Black intellectual and cultural world that has changed significantly since the journal’s founding. TBS continues to engage and cultivate differential Black political conversations and cultural expressions from across the Black world while maintaining its core commitment to tough-minded thinking and an emancipatory project. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, we imagine ourselves as the forum for ideas and conversations that have yet to emerge.
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