Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Police Brutality: The Nexus Between Historical Injustices, Police Culture And The African American Experience, Claude M. Rhone

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study focused on the harassment, maltreatment, and brutality of African Americans by police officers. The recent widespread condemnation and social justice protests in response to incidents of police brutality point to historical injustices inherent to the culture of policing. Slavery provides the overarching backdrop; however, Jim Crow laws cultivated the structural adaptations necessary to fulfill segregation between African Americans and Whites. The American policing model, which evolved from slave patrols to public entities, continued as an apparatus in the marginalization and disenfranchisement of African Americans. The narrative of “defunding the police” suggests that the past’s cultural proximity renders the …

Finding Identities: Identities In Video Games From A Gender, Race, And Identity Representation, Osayame Erinmwingbovo

ART 108: Introduction to Games Studies

In this paper I will bring light to the exploration of gender, race, and identity in video games. While also having a focus on how the representation crosses with social and cultural contexts. I will be researching different games from many different genres, which will show light to the way video games reflect and shape societal attitudes towards gender, race, and identity. When using close textual analysis and theoretical framework from topics that include critical race theory, media, and feminist theory. This research will help to seek to explore the nuances and complexities of representation in gaming which implicates video …

Examining The Lived Experience Of Disabilities Through Gender And Race [Presentation & Handout Activity], Melinda S. Burchard Ph.D., Sarah Myers, Mila Acosta-Morales, Mireliz Bermudez, Grace Rhinehart, Maddie Unger

Faculty Educator Scholarship

Presented at the 2024 Messiah University Humanities Symposium.

3–4 p.m. “Examining the Lived Experience of Disabilities through Gender and Race”

Jointly sponsored faculty–student colloquium: Boyer 432 •Melinda Burchard, Ph.D., Professor of Special Education •Sarah Myers, M.S.L.S., Public Services Librarian, Murray Library •Mila Acosta-Morales (2027) •Mireliz Bermudez (2025) •Grace Rhinehart (2025) •Maddie Unger (2025)

A Brief History Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints With Emphasis On The Charismatic Roots Of The Race-Based Priesthood Denial, Wayne A. Denton

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation provides an overview of the history of race relations and the evolution of authority in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). It traces the early charismatic leadership of Joseph Smith and his liberal racial views, which increased tension between the LDS church and broader American society. After Smith's death, Brigham Young instituted racist policies like slavery in Utah and a priesthood ban for black members to reduce tensions. In the Progressive Era, LDS scholars theologically entrenched the priesthood ban despite their progressive leanings. A push towards correlation and centralized control of doctrine in the twentieth …

African Influence In The Bible: A Sub-Saharan Response To The Gospel And The Divine Prerogative Of African Incorporation In God’S Redemptive Plan, Robert Milton Bugg Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The Bible presents God's magnificent divine plan, executed by chosen people for a specific purpose. There are illustrations of those from various regions impacting those worldwide throughout the Bible. While much of the Old Testament takes place in ancient Mesopotamia, the magnitude of God’s plan is global. This dissertation will examine sub-Saharan people groups in Africa, particularly the Kushites and ancient Ethiopians. The discussion will include the history of Africans in the ancient world, their migration and development parallel to recorded biblical history, and their role in the Bible. Scholars utilize many different terms when referring to Kushites, depending on …

Gordon, Ina, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarized by Kathryn Amend

Ina Gordon grew up on Morris Avenue, just east of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. She describes her childhood with two siblings in a tiny apartment, and her happy upbringing despite her family’s economic struggles. She reminisces on summers spent renting bungalows in the Catskills and childhood joys such as roller skating, visiting the library, and playing tennis.

Gordon explains the importance of education in her family, and describes how she ended up traveling to the University of Chicago for her undergraduate degree. She and her brother both received scholarships to attend. They had a …

Complex Complexions: A Comparative Study Of Colorism Across The Long Nineteenth Century, Robb Daniel Nelson

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This dissertation demonstrates the complex nature that skin complexion has played within four different racial communities in the United States during the Early Republic and antebellum periods. Each chapter investigates the cultural, social, and political relationships between a local settler colonial Anglo-American population, and a socially significant, non-white population(s) in the same area. The four chapters individually focus on Blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, the relationship between Indigenous Hawaiians, Japanese immigrants, and Anglo-Americans in Hawaii, Californios in Alta California, and Mormons in Utah. This dissertation contends that the practices associated with empire building and imperial expansion which include manifest destiny, …

The Word That Dare Not Speak Its Name, Pamela Caughie

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay asks, when does our effort to avoid offending students interfere with our ability to teach them? Rehearsing conflicts over language and terminology, over who can speak and what can be said, from my four-decade career as a literature professor, critical theorist, and gender scholar, I confront contemporary efforts to censor certain words, to prohibit certain kinds of inquiry, and to limit who can speak about certain subjects by placing recent incidents in relation to previous debates in academia and the public sphere. The university classroom and scholarly peer-reviewed journals have long served as spaces where established viewpoints can …

Power And Impact: Examining The Role Of Monarchy And Media In Shaping Attitudes Around Race And Human Rights For Sub-Saharan Migrant Populations In Morocco, Leila Narisetti

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this investigation is to delve into the intricate dynamics surrounding migration in Morocco, specially focusing on the Maghreb region’s treatment of sub-Saharan migrants and the complex interplay between institutions of power, media narratives and societal attitudes towards race and identity. Drawing on Morocco’s historical relationship with slavery and its present handling of Africanness, the analysis unveils a culture of denial that deeply impacts the integration of migrants and the perpetuating of discriminatory practices. The narrative shifts towards the role of rhetoric and media, emphasizing its pivotal importance in shaping societal perspectives, particularly regarding non-Moroccans. The examination extends …

Gurock, Jeffrey, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Jeffrey Gurock’s parents, his father, originally from Harlem and his mother from Brooklyn, were among the first people to move into Parkchester when it opened. His father was a firefighter and his mother was a bookkeeper. Gurock was born in 1949 and lived in Parkchester until he married in 1974. After living briefly in Cincinnati, Ohio, he returned to the Bronx and has been living in Riverdale ever since.

Gurock remembers Parkchester as predominantly Irish Catholic with many Italian and Jewish children. No Hispanics or African Americans were allowed to move in until 1968. While he recognizes this segregation now, …

Indoctrination Into Hate: The Development Of Racial Neuroses Resulting From Racist Socialization Under White Supremacy, Aliya Kathryn Benabderrazak

Haslam Scholars Projects

Racial-ethnic socialization is critical to our unique and individual conceptualization of reality. This socialization occurs explicitly and implicitly across the lifespan and has significant implications for one’s behavior, social relationships, and ideological beliefs. Two of the most notable and impactful spheres in which racial-ethnic socialization occurs are within the family unit and schooling contexts. The treatment and teachings within these two spaces shape our social and psychological development. The first part of my project considers the neurosis of Whiteness as a psychological consequence of racist socialization within school settings and primarily White communities—as a macro example of the family unit—to …

Mixed Speak: Towards A Re-Poetics Of Race And Self, Celina Mizuki Ohga Samuelson

Media and Cultural Studies Honors Projects

This paper tells the stories of mixed-race Japanese people. I engage in a re-poetics, positing storytelling as an essential tool into complicating our understandings of race and self. I examine the relationship between language and race, exploring how subjects existing within a space of mixedness navigate identity-formation and racial belonging. Operating under a socio-constructivist lens, I begin with a brief re-telling of the history of race in Japan, re-framing mythologies of race throughout literature, legislation, and into national and colonial projects. While popular discourse alleges Japan was and is a country of racial homogeneity, I argue that this falsifies colonial …

Believe It Or Not: Discovering The Role Of Marketplace Ministry In Reconciling Race And Religion In The African American Church, Shawn Burgs

DMin Project Theses

This Doctor of Ministry Project explores the experiences of African Americans as faith holders in the crux of race, religion, and marketplace and how the interconnectedness of these facets can lend to reconciliation. The purpose of exploring how African American believers experience race and religious reconciliation is a noble goal that seeks to address the challenges faced by many African American believers in navigating their faith and cultural engagement. By examining their experiences, insights, and perspectives, we can learn more about the unique challenges they face and the strategies they employ to overcome them. This information can help us develop …

Hochberg, Herbert, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Herbert Hochberg, born in 1930, spent the first 10 years of his life in economic hardship because of the Great Depression. Both his parents migrated from Western Ukraine and lived in the Bronx since their marriage in 1928. They took in an infant to make end’s meet, and after the war his father went into the business of building two-family homes in the Bronx, while his mother stayed at home. Hochberg grew up across from Bronx Park until 1939 when his family moved to the newly developed Northeast Bronx near Allerton Avenue and Pelham Parkway. He describes the area as …

Brock, Joan, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Joan Brock, born 1943, grew up on Bryant Avenue between 173 and 174 Streets in the Bronx. The East Bronx was considered poorer than the West Bronx, split by the Grand Concourse. Both of her parents were born and raised in New York, and they met while they were both working in a tea factory. Her father would get into the business of selling vending machines until Brock was 13 and he bought a hardware store. Her mother never worked after marrying except to help her husband with the store.

Brock describes the neighborhood as predominantly Jewish and Italian, though …

Salinger, Marianne, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Marianne Salinger was born in Berlin, Germany in 1923 and moved to New York with her family when she was 15. Fleeing from the Nazis, her family first moved to England, then to Philadelphia, and then to Kew Gardens in Queens, New York. Salinger lived in Kew Gardens for the largest portion of her life. She remembers how initially, Kew Gardens was filled with immigrants, primarily Jewish immigrants, but became more Hispanic and Russian over time. She moved to the Bronx in 2016.

Salinger did not know that she was Jewish until she was nine years old and considered herself …

Hochberg, Marc, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Marc Hochberg was born 1949. He grew up with parents, both the children of immigrants, in a six story apartment building on Holland Avenue, off the south side of Pelham Parkway. The area is remembered as 90% Jewish, with one Italian friend from elementary school. He attended Castle Hill Junior High School in Parkchester, which still had few non-white students at the time, and the Bronx High School of Science. When he was in high school his parents moved to Grand Concourse and 165th Street. Bronx Science is remembered as a top education, and he would go to Franklin and …

Several, Ruth, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Ruth Several was born in 1951 and grew up living on the Grand Concourse, where her parents were living at the time. Her father worked at the Concourse Center of Israel, an orthodox synagogue on the Grand Concourse. They lived in a large apartment in an art deco style building. She remembers 95% of the building as Jewish, not including the non-Jewish superintendent. The neighborhood had many mom and pop stores, no chain stores, and many synagogues. Several attend a Jewish Day School in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so her mother was a bookkeeper nearby who would take …

We The People. Who? The Face Of Future American Politics Is Shaped By Perceived Foreignness Of Candidates Of Color, Patrizia Chirco, Tonya M. Buchanan

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Pursuing a more equitable political representation of a country's demographics is essential both as a matter of principle and pragmatism (i.e., realpolitik). As such, the goal of the present study was to replicate and expand on research on the impact of voter race/ethnicity and ideology on voting behaviors and interpersonal judgments of political candidates of color from different racial and ethnic groups. After participants (N = 282) saw the same political candidate of color (randomly assigned to identify as Mexican American vs. African American), we assessed interpersonal judgments and behaviors (e.g., expertise, voting intentions), perceived Americanness, and memory for skin …

Katz, Gloria, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Gloria Katz’s family immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe, moving up from the Lower East Side to the Bronx on Park Avenue. She describes her many relatives coming to New York and making lives for themselves, including her parents meeting on a singles cruise around Manhattan for young immigrants and getting married. Her older brother was born in 1934, and was a rebellious and hyperactive child, getting kicked out of yeshiva and sent to public school. Katz was born in September 1944. She explains that because her father did not have stable employment in the fur industry during …

Environmentalism: Flint Michigan Water Crisis, Zamzam Mohammed

Religion: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

This essay examines the public health hazard of Flint Michigan that affected tens of thousands of individuals predominately Black and African Americans. This event was not only systematic, but it portrayed a sense of racial bias and environmental injustice. Not only were Flint residents getting sick due to the unhealthy supply of water source but they were silenced. Unfortunately Black and African Americans felt undermined and oppressed. The underdevelopment and unethical abandonment of the city portrays how much power and authority the city officials possess. Their disregard for the health hazard proves that they care more about monetary gain than …

Yelloz, Eva, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Eva Yelloz was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany and came to the Bronx in 1949 with her parents. They lived in the Melrose neighborhood in the Bronx, on Avenue St. John. Her mother was 19 when World War Two began, working as an apprentice in a non-Jewish home, and she heard her family was in the Warsaw ghetto. Her father had been killed and the family was sent to Treblinka, but she jumped off the train, escaping and being nursed back to life by a non-Jewish family before becoming a partisan for the remainder of the war. …

Hemispheric Reconstructions: Post-Emancipation Social Movements And Capitalist Reaction In Colombia And The United States, James E. Sanders

History Faculty Publications

As historians have begun to conceptualize the U.S. Civil War as a global event, so too must they consider Reconstruction as a political process that transcended national boundaries. The United States and Colombia both abolished slavery during civil wars; ex-slaves in both societies struggled for full citizenship and landholding, partially succeeding for a time; in both societies, a harsh reaction ripped full citizenship from the freedpeople and denied their claims to the land. These events, usually studied only as part of a national story in either the United States or Colombia, can also be understood, and perhaps be better understood, …

The Racial Inventions Of Medieval Travel Writings, Paramita Vadhahong Painter

Undergraduate Research Awards

The famous travel writings of Ibn Battuta and Sir John Mandeville convey formative racial, political, and sociocultural dynamics that shape their respective regions and time periods. This paper investigates how their travel narratives manipulate the reader into accepting the authors’ definitions of otherness through the lens of race, religion, and alterity. Their accounts address elements such as bodily difference, standards of social hospitality, and religious customs from untrustworthy yet popularly accepted standpoints, indirectly promoting reform of other cultures towards their own worldviews. Although Ibn Battuta is a historical figure whose travels across the Islamic world are documented in written accounts, …

‘There Is No Gallery’: Race And The Politics Of Space At The Capitol Theatre, New York, Pardis Dabashi

Literatures in English Faculty Research and Scholarship

This essay brings developments in Black film historiography and architecture studies to bear on the study of Northern picture palaces as the period of their prominence coincided with the Jim Crow era. Taking as my focus New York City’s Capitol Theatre – which opened in the immediate wake of the US race riots of 1919 and was the largest movie theater to date – I show how Northern middle-class film culture enforced racial segregation in the absence of legal protection. Southern movie theaters were able either to outlaw Black attendance or relegate their Black patronage to the gallery, a seating …

Book Review: A Field Guide To White Supremacy, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Understanding An American Paradox: An Overview Of The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, Spearit

Articles

In The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, Sahar Aziz unveils a mechanism that perpetuates the persecution of religion. While the book’s title suggests a problem that engulfs Muslims, it is not a new problem, but instead a recurring theme in American history. Aziz constructs a model that demonstrates how racialization of a religious group imposes racial characteristics on that group, imbuing it with racial stereotypes that effectively treat the group as a racial rather than religious group deserving of religious liberty.

In identifying a racialization process that effectively veils religious discrimination, Aziz’s book points to several important …

An Intersectional Approach To Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Women’S Sexualized Body-Positive Imagery On Instagram, Megan A. Vendemia, Kyla N. Brathwaite, David C. Deandrea

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Our work adopted an intersectional approach to investigate how women’s racial identity may influence how they evaluate and are impacted by body-positive imagery of women on social media. In a 2 × 2 × 2 experiment (N = 975), we examined how source race (Black vs White) and sexualization (non-sexualized vs sexualized) in body-positive images affect Black and White viewers’ impressions of self-interest, moral appropriateness, and body positivity. Results indicated that viewers generally responded more favorably to non-sexualized (vs sexualized) images: Participants reported less self-interested motivations for sharing, found the images more morally appropriate, and believed they were more …

“I Never Shrink From Any Duty”: Mary Easton Sibley And The Gendered Politics Of Abolitionism, Stephanie Marks

Student Scholarship

Mary Easton Sibley, the founder of Lindenwood University, was an ambitious woman. A supporter of the abolition movement and women's education, she founded and taught in schools for white women and enslaved African Americans in St. Charles, Missouri. As an American woman in the nineteenth century, however, her attitudes toward race and gender proved complex, reflecting the struggle of white women at the time. Drawing on scholarship that examines a shift in the focus of white female abolitionists of the period from freeing enslaved peoples to freeing white Americans from the sin of slavery, This case study poses two unique …

How Do You Vote? Breaking Down Party Identification By Racial Resentment, Stellarose B. Emery

Student Publications

Racial resentment has long existed in the United States, with the idea that Black people receive unfair advantages by exploiting their race thus negatively affecting White people. In a time in which politics is drastically polarized, a focus is put onto an individual's political identity. The purpose of this research is to determine under what conditions does race influence vote choice by examining how racial bias influences political affiliation. Using data from the 2012 and 2016 National Election Study, the results revealed that ideological thoughts do have an impact on a person’s political party identity as individuals with a higher …