Greg E. Carr is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. A teacher/scholar with academic specialties in Africana Studies normative theory, Africana intellectual history, classical African history and historiography and African-American nationalism, Dr. Carr is Howard’s only faculty member with a Ph.D. in the academic discipline of Africana Studies.
Dr. Carr earned a B.S. in Speech Communication in Theater (Tennessee State University), a J.D. (The Ohio State University College of Law), and an M.A. in African and African-American Studies (The Ohio State University). His 1998 Temple University Ph.D. was the first scholarly attempt to investigate the long-view intellectual genealogy of the Afrocentric Idea.
The School District of Philadelphia’s First Resident Scholar on Race and Culture (1999-2000), Dr. Carr Edited and wrote the majority of lesson chapters as well as led a team of academics and educational policymakers in the design of the curriculum framework for the African-American History course now required for public high school students in Philadelphia. The integration of his commitment to teaching and scholarship is also evidenced in his role as a co-founder of the Philadelphia Freedom Schools Movement, a community-based academic initiative that has involved over 10,000 elementary school students, 2,000 high school students, and 1,000 college students in an intensive, African-centered curriculum. In May 2006, he presented his work with Africana history and culture in public education curricula at the invitation of the Board of Public Education in Salvador, Bahia, and has lectured across the U.S. and in Ghana, Egypt, South Africa, France, and England, among other places.
Dr. Carr is a former member of the board of the National Council for Black Studies and is the Second Vice President of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations. A grantee of Howard’s Fund for Academic Excellence, invited lecturer on pedagogy from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Assessment and a twice-named Professor of the Year by the Howard University Student Association, the College of Arts and Sciences Student Council and the College of Arts and Sciences Honors Association, Dr Carr, Dr Dana Williams, Howard staff and sixty undergraduate students inaugurated Howard’s historic Summer Study Abroad in Egypt in 2008.
Dr. Carr’s publications include: “Towards an Intellectual History of Africana Studies: Genealogy and Normative Theory” (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2007); “You Don’t Call The Kittens Biscuits: Disciplinary Africana Studies and the Study of Malcolm X” (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2007); “The Transatlantic Slave Trade,” (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2006); Lessons in Africana Studies (Philadelphia: Songhai Press, 2006); and “The African-Centered Philosophy of History: An Explanatory Essay on the Genealogy of Foundationalist Historical Thought and African Nationalist Identity Construction” (Acton, MA: Tapestry Press, 2001). He is the Co-Editor of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations’ multi-volume “African World History Project,” inheriting the mantle from the project’s two previous Editors, the late Jacob H. Carruthers and Asa G. Hilliard III. His chapter in the AWHP volume on historiography, “Inscribing African World History: Intergenerational Repetition and Improvisation of Ancestral Instructions,” rewrites the basic assumptions of African-Centered historical philosophy.
Dr. Carr has represented Howard University as a spokesman in a wide range of print and electronic media, including The New York Times, Le Monde, USA Today, MSNBC, National Public Radio, WHUR, WHUT and CNN, as well as a range of local radio, television and internet media outlets.