Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Hiplife Music In Ghana: Postcolonial Performances Of Modernity, Nii Kotei Nikoi Nov 2019

Hiplife Music In Ghana: Postcolonial Performances Of Modernity, Nii Kotei Nikoi

Doctoral Dissertations

This research project examines the operation of development discourse in popular culture, how it is reproduced, contested and how alternatives are imagined. It is a post-development study of the production and consumption of Ghanaian hiplife music videos and culture. It explores how hiplife makers challenge development discourse and advance alternative ideas of social transformation. Considering the enduring (and damaging) legacies of colonialism, hiplife as a site of relative freedom of expression is fertile for the potential production of a decolonial vocabulary to heal colonial wounds— undoing colonial sensibilities imposed on the colonized. The project reveals that mainstream male hiplife stars …


Contralto Marian Anderson As Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie Rocke Apr 2019

Contralto Marian Anderson As Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie Rocke

Doctoral Dissertations

Marian Anderson was an internationally-acclaimed contralto and goodwill ambassador for the United States government. In her role as a political asset, she utilized her talents to evoke a perception of the United States that differed from past assessments involving race relations. To provide an understanding of how she became an icon and asset to the State Department, three theoretical frameworks are applied—performativity, prototype, and social semiotics. In classical theories of performativity, classification separates us into categories and hierarchies, while concepts help us to categorize, understand, and predict the material world. Scholars have defined identity as a series of citational acts …