African Athena was Bernal's original title for Black Athena, his "infamous"work that has confronted the modern academy with some of the mostchallenging questions it has faced over the last twenty years. Thisinterdisciplinary conference seeks neither to demonize nor lionize Bernal'sbook, but to open dialogue on the issues it has posed: can a myth ofAfrocentrism ever be a useful narrative in contemporary culture? How doAfricanizing and classicizing cultures interface and interpenetrate in thearts and lives of Africans, Europeans, Caribbeans and Americans? Does BlackAthena offer new possibilities for comparison between African and Jewishdiasporas, cultures and struggles? How do we deal with the difficultcollusion of essentialist and poststructuralist discourses in "postcolonial"thought? These issues are only a point of departure.