African Pyramids of Knowledge

Molefi Kete Asante has been named by his peers as one of the most influential contemporary scholars in America. In fact, Maulana Karenga said,"Molefi is the preeminent Afrocentric theorist, an intellectual of the highest caliber, and a fine human being." Michael Dyson has written that, "The pioneering Afrocentrist Molefi Kete Asante is one of the most influential African American scholars." Asante's contribution to scholarship appears in his own work, the work of his mentored students, and the critical scholarship engendered by his provocative philosophical approach to the study of Africa and its Diaspora. He writes history, novels, short stories, essays, plays, critical commentary, and poetry. Asante has directed more than 120 doctoral students and his students lead departments and teach at universities across the world. Professor Asante received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles and has taught at UCLA, Purdue, SUNY-Buffalo, Florida State, Howard, and Temple University. Asante is a Visiting Professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa. He is currently Professor and Chair, Department of Africology, Temple University. Asante has published 78 (seventy-eight) books, including the comprehensive The History of Africa. African Pyramids of Knowledge represents a synthesis of Asante's most powerful arguments for the overturn of a Eurocentric consciousness that prevents African people from exercising their own agency based on their fundamental cultural values. In this volume Asante has sought to provide the formal and informal student with the structure for critical reflections on significant issues in the African world. Thus, African Pyramids is as much a methodological as theoretical work.