Digital Commons Network^™

Bedeviled Beauty: My Journey Through White American Theater Institutions, J'Aila C. Price

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Game console: Oculus Quest

World: American Theater Institutions

Player: Minority

Place: United States

Level: “Ain’t no way.”

This thesis explores the contrast between the Westernized philosophies ingrained in my education and my identity as a Black female artist. It sheds light on the difficulties of pursuing higher education in the arts and the gaps that arise from limited exposure to culturally diverse Black resources, revealing the systemic issues in Western performance education. The paper also discusses the insights gained from my journey as a Black female artist, focusing on my thesis performance of Blood at the Root, which is …

An Exploration Of Bengali Identity With Material And Visual Artifacts Through Painting, Farah Billah

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Painting is and always has been, at its root, an exploration of identity for me. My current collection of work explores the stripping of Eurocentric beauty standards and presentation of the divine of the Brown Body to reveal my version of the human spirit. My drawings, paintings, and a hand-tufted rug all made with a surreal, colorful representation of the coming together of body and mind.

Social Power Of Jazz Festivals, Olga Bekenshtein

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Jazz festivals occur in all parts of the world, small cities and metropolises, urban and rural landscapes, stadiums, churches, streets, and abandoned factories. Being a part of the entertainment industry, they have the potential to impact social change. Jazz festivals help us reconsider notions of identity and community, and their communal experience has the potential to undermine dominant social norms. The industry of jazz festivals is based on Black music and has a history of positive and negative social outcomes. Evaluating festivals through the symbolic meaning of music provides an optic into how festivals marginalize and exploit African American cultural …

“An’ No Place To Lead ‘Em”: The Grapes Of Wrath And The Breakdown Of Myth, Nicholas F. Comeaux

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In spite of its common designation as an outmoded classic of sentimental middlebrow literature, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath remains relevant as a milestone in an extended liminal stage between the failing cultural myths of the past and the founding of newly relevant shared stories. This stage begins with the Enlightenment and continues to present-day conflicts over identity, labor, migrants, notions of truth itself, the function and responsibilities of government, and our shared ecological destiny. Arriving near the end of the Depression and its concurrent economic and environmental disasters, The Grapes of Wrath reflects a particularly chaotic stage in …

Wandering Sagebrush, Andrea Cyrus

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Wandering Sagebrush is a collection of eight unified short stories. The main themes of the thesis include: the struggle of identity and how one finds the people and places to call family and home. The stories focus on family we make, family we lose, family we choose, and the decisions one makes in the name of family.

An Old Woman Bumped Her On Canal, Nordette N. Adams

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This work is a collection of poems revolving around black or African-American identity and the intersection of feminist consciousness with racial struggle. An examination of the unknown or forgotten black woman runs through this work as well as connection to a mother figure. The poems also reflect the influence of place, particularly New Orleans, its history, its culture, and its present evolution post-Hurricane Katrina. The collection's preface includes development of a unique poetics that considers identity theories and models of the subject in light of poetic voice. The poems use caesura heavily, rhyme, and sonic echo. Poets who have influenced …