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And They Entered As Ladies: When Race, Class And Black Femininity Clashed At Central High School, Misti Nicole Harper Aug 2017

And They Entered As Ladies: When Race, Class And Black Femininity Clashed At Central High School, Misti Nicole Harper

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“And They Entered as Ladies: When Race, Class and Black Femininity Clashed at Central High School,” explores the intersectionality of race, gender and class status as middle-class black women led the integration movement and were the focal point of white backlash during the 1957 Little Rock Central High School crisis. Six of the nine black students chosen to integrate Central High School were carefully selected girls from middle-class homes, whose mothers and female family members played active parts in keeping their daughters enrolled at Central, while Daisy Gatson Bates orchestrated the integration of the capital’s school system. Nevertheless, these women …


The Hollow Class: African-American Class-Passing And The Popular, Whitney Martin Aug 2017

The Hollow Class: African-American Class-Passing And The Popular, Whitney Martin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My project presses to include popular fiction, television, and film for serious critical consideration. To contextualize my research, I use theories that critically examine popular literature, connecting to the work of Janice Radway and Keenan Norris, and I study the African-American focus on class as explored by E. Franklin Frazier. In focusing on the popular, I highlight the everydayness of class and race anxieties. I build on Gwendolyn Foster’s work on class passing but stress racial intersections with identity performance. I rely on New Historicism and Critical Race Theory to substantiate my examination of the literature. I look at specific …


Indigenous Resistance: Settler-Colonialism, Nation Building, And Colonial Patriarchy, Megan E. Vallowe May 2017

Indigenous Resistance: Settler-Colonialism, Nation Building, And Colonial Patriarchy, Megan E. Vallowe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Indigenous Resistance: Settler-Colonialism, Nation Building, and Colonial Patriarchy,” interrogates the Western Hemisphere’s spatial construction by settler-states, Indigenous nations, and activists groups. In this project, I assert that Indigenous/Settler contact zones are significantly more convoluted than current scholarship’s use of contact zones in that the distinctions between Indigenous actors and settler-colonial ones are often blurred. These hybrid contact zones sometimes contain negative outcomes for all participants and often include undercurrents of insidious power dynamics within and across settler-states and Indigenous peoples alike. Using critical cartographic theory and deconstruction methods, this project first illustrates how empires ascribed a racialized patriarchy onto the …


Wayward Women, Macho Men: Linguistic Construction Of Gender Binaries In Yxta Maya Murray's Locas And Denise Chavez's Loving Pedro Infante, Stephanie Tangman May 2017

Wayward Women, Macho Men: Linguistic Construction Of Gender Binaries In Yxta Maya Murray's Locas And Denise Chavez's Loving Pedro Infante, Stephanie Tangman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Language labels and defines in order to enhance meaning and communication, but through these labels and definitions speakers are also conditioned to associate certain connotations with words and, therefore, their referents. While often harmless, linguistic conditioning can at times create unsavory associations with these referents. One of these instances occurs in gendered labels and conceptions of male and female bodies and purpose. Both Yxta Maya Murray’s Locas and Denise Chavez’s Loving Pedro Infante can be read through a lens that applies linguistic conditioning with gender theory in order to examine the reinterpretation of female archetypes in the Chicana imagination. It …


Cultural Reimagining And Literary Voice: Southeastern Tribal Women Negotiate Cultural, Social, And Political Identity Through Literature, Linda Sue Shaffer May 2017

Cultural Reimagining And Literary Voice: Southeastern Tribal Women Negotiate Cultural, Social, And Political Identity Through Literature, Linda Sue Shaffer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines literature written by women who identify with Native tribes that originally inhabited, and in some cases continue to inhabit, the southeastern area of what is now known as the United States. The analysis presented in each chapter applies tribally specific methods used for creating knowledge within the particular discourse community being represented through literature. The project also employs the perspectives of Native literary scholars to consider the ways in which the roles and lives of Native women have been influenced by Euro-American values and to analyze the ways in which these female authors engage literature as a …


Refusing To Be Dispossessed: African American Land Retention In The Us South From Reconstruction To World War Ii, Camille Goldmon May 2017

Refusing To Be Dispossessed: African American Land Retention In The Us South From Reconstruction To World War Ii, Camille Goldmon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

African Americans in the South were tied to the land during slavery and after emancipation. Many felt that land ownership was the key to freedom. For decades, black farmers strove for land ownership, in many cases falling prey to sharecropping and tenancy agreements in the meantime. Despite this drive toward independent farming, however, since 1920, there has been a steady decline in the number of black farm owners. This trend is especially prevalent in the Southern United States. The black farm owners who persevered through periods of economic, social, and political turmoil were able to, for varying reasons, navigate those …


Exploring Winery Operation As A Diversification Option For Native American Tribal Enterprises, Randi M. Combs May 2017

Exploring Winery Operation As A Diversification Option For Native American Tribal Enterprises, Randi M. Combs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to examine the perceptions of tribal members regarding the strengths, challenges, and opportunities presented by tribal winery operation. Specifically, issues of business diversification, marketing, perceived barriers to success, potential benefits to the tribe, and the role of agriculture in the preservation of tribal heritage were considered. A modified mixed-methods exploratory sequential research model was used to collect and organize data in two phases. Phase 1 quantitative data was used to inform the development of a Phase 2 qualitative interview protocol. Phase 1 found a significant relationship between a higher income level and a lower …


Measuring Racial Competence In Athletic Academic Support Staffs, Aquasia Thornhill May 2017

Measuring Racial Competence In Athletic Academic Support Staffs, Aquasia Thornhill

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Critical Race Theory, a theoretical framework that has been gaining much recognition in sport literature, is a useful and beneficial tool in discussing race and racism. To better understand the context in which academic support staff appreciate the functionality and significance of race, the present study measures the racial competence of athletic academic support staffs. This research study explores the need to integrate a model such as Critical Race Theory that promotes “racial competency” among academic support staffs working closely with student-athletes of color, and measures Color-Blind Racial Attitudes that may have effects on the types of interactions individuals are …


The Net Of Nostalgia: Class, Culture, And Political Alienation And Nostalgia In Contemporary Latino And South Asian American Literature, Farzana Akhter May 2017

The Net Of Nostalgia: Class, Culture, And Political Alienation And Nostalgia In Contemporary Latino And South Asian American Literature, Farzana Akhter

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Generally thought of as a yearning for recent past, or homesickness, nostalgia is seen as a sentiment that impairs living in the present. And in case of immigrants, nostalgia is thought of as a debilitating form of escapism and an inability to adapt to change and mobility. In this dissertation, contesting against the prevalent concept, I argue that immigrant nostalgia is neither a colored memory (Dyson 117) nor a romance with one’s own fantasy (Boym xiii); rather, immigrant nostalgia has a socio-economic and political underpinning. By exploring the various nuances of immigrant experience delineated in the literary works of South …


The Black Maternal And Cultural Healing In Twentieth Century Black Women's Fiction, Paula Wingard White May 2017

The Black Maternal And Cultural Healing In Twentieth Century Black Women's Fiction, Paula Wingard White

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work examines representations of maternal relationships between black women in five contemporary novels: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Sula by Toni Morrison, The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara, The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Louisiana by Erna Brodber. Rather than situating the origins of black feminist literary studies during the Black Women’s Literary Renaissance of the 1970s and 1980s, I argue that Hurston’s work shapes contemporary black feminist literary studies. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Nanny provides a mothering archetype that inspires a dominant theme and practice—the black maternal, within contemporary black …


Examining The Phenomenon Of Dropping Out Of High School Through The Perspectives And Experiences Of The African American Male, John L. Colbert May 2017

Examining The Phenomenon Of Dropping Out Of High School Through The Perspectives And Experiences Of The African American Male, John L. Colbert

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We expect all students to achieve and succeed in school, yet current data shows that 23.6% of African American students in Arkansas drop out of school (Bailey & Dziko, 2008). The African American male high school dropouts are much higher than the number of male dropouts from other ethnic groups. As the researcher reviewed the current data about African American dropouts, it was the impetus behind this study. Although many have discussed and written about African American male dropouts in educational forums, essays, short stories, dissertations, and even movies, few have captured the experiences of the African American males in …