American Studies Commons^™

Plotting The Plantationocene With The History Of Mary Prince, Shelby Johnson

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

In this essay, I consider how The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831) extends vital affordances for assembling a literary history of ecological rupture, settler colonialism, and transatlantic slavery. These insights arise from my experiences teaching Prince in “Plotting the Plantationocene in Early Atlantic Literature” (Fall 2021), a course which took up what it means to orient to historical formations of climate change as co-emergent with plantation systems. I argue that my students explored how figures like Prince open politically vibrant pathways for being in the world otherwise to plantation modernity.

Intercessory Power: A Literary Analysis Of Ethics And Care In Toni Morrison’S Song Of Solomon, Alice Walker’S Meridian, And Toni Cade Bambara’S Those Bones Are Not My Child, Kelly Mills

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine post-Reconstruction literature as an intercessor that creates a common memory among readers and activates them as ethical agents who can move through retributive violence rather than enact violence. With the increase of racial violence in the United States, it is essential to find ways to end the cycle of retributive violence and establish a justice system that does not marginalize individuals but forges connections in the midst of oppression. This literary analysis engages three novels—Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Alice Walker’s Meridian, and Toni Cade Bambara’s Those Bones Are Not My Child: …

Book Review: Forced Confrontation: The Politics Of Dead Bodies In Germany At The End Of World War Ii, Christiane K. Alsop

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

The Unbribable Witness: Image, Word, And Testimony Of Crimes Against Humanity In Mark Twain’S King Leopold’S Soliloquy (1905), Nora Nunn

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In the creation of King Leopold’s Soliloquy, a textured, visually irrefutable, and darkly satirical account of crimes against humanity in the Belgian Congo Free State, Mark Twain aimed to evoke his Euro-American audience’s empathy by activating their imaginations and inaugurating political reform. Informed by the work of cultural and literary critics such as Roland Barthes, this paper considers how the visual imagery in Twain’s text engender questions about fact, testimony, and witnessing in the realm of human rights and collective violence—both in the Congo Free State and, indirectly, in the United States. I ultimately argue that the relation (or …

Negotiating The Delta: Dr. T.R.M. Howard In Mound Bayou, Mississippi, William Jackson Southerland

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the racially segregationist practices and the integrationist, inclusionist formation of African American leader Dr. T.R.M. Howard during his tenure as a surgeon and entrepreneur in the all-black Mississippi Delta community of Mound Bayou, 1942-1956. The paper analytically investigates the careful racial negotiations that were required of Howard as he advanced a separatist but egalitarian economic and social plan for Delta blacks. This separatist plan, it is argued, is grounded in the racial pragmatism of the Seventh-day Adventist church which provided a bibliocentric, Tuskegee-inspired education to Howard from youth through medical school and beyond. Howard’s adherence to Adventist …

What’S In Your Toolbox? Examining Tool Choices At Two Middle And Late Woodland-Period Sites On Florida’S Central Gulf Coast, Lori L. O'Neal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The examination of the tools that prehistoric people crafted for subsistence and related practices offers distinctive insights into how they lived their lives. Most often, researchers study these practices in isolation, by tool type or by material. However, by using a relational perspective, my research explores the tool assemblage as a whole including bone, stone and shell. This allows me to study the changes in tool industries in relation to one another, something that I could not accomplish by studying only one material or tool type. I use this broader approach to tool manufacture and use for the artifact assemblage …

Finding A Home: Latino Residential Influx Into Progress Village, 1990-2010, Christopher Julius Pineda

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Progress Village in Tampa Florida was developed in the late 1950s in response to the dislocation of black families during the construction of Interstate-4. Furthermore this community became an opportunity for many black and more specifically, African American families, to live in a community devoid of racist attitudes and tensions rampant in inner city Tampa at the time. For over thirty years this community’s residential population was overwhelmingly (90 percent) black or African American. In the 1990s though this community would begin to experience the first wave of Latino residents and by 2000 this group would comprise over 2 percent …

‘Reclamation Road’: A Microhistory Of Massacre Memory In Clear Lake, California, Jeremiah J. Garsha

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article is a microhistory of not only the massacre of the indigenous Pomo people in Clear Lake, California, but also the memorialization of this event. It is an examination of two plaques marking the site of the Bloody Island massacre, exploring how memorial representations produce and silence historical memory of genocide under emerging and shifting historical narratives. A 1942 plaque is contextualized to show the co-option of the Pomo and massacre memory by an Anglo-American organization dedicated to settler memory. A 2005 plaque is read as a decentering of this narrative, guiding the viewer through a new hierarchy of …

'She Shall Not Be Moved': Black Women's Spiritual Practice In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, And Home, Rondrea Danielle Mathis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

‘She Shall Not Be Moved’: Black Women’s Spiritual Practice in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, and Home argues that from The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s debut novel, to her 2012 novel, Home, Morrison brings her female characters to voice, autonomy, and personal divinity through unconventional spiritual work. The project addresses the history of Black women’s activist and spiritual work, Toni Morrison’s engagement with unconventional spiritual practice, and closes with a personal interrogation of the author’s connection to Black women’s spiritual practice.

Caribbean Traditions In Modern Choreographies: Articulation And Construction Of Black Diaspora Identity In L'Ag'ya By Katherine Dunham, Viktoria Tafferner-Gulyas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The interdisciplinary field of Dance Studies as a separate arena focusing on the social, political, cultural, and aesthetic aspects of human movement and dance emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Dance criticism integrated Dance Studies into the academy as critics addressed the social and cultural significance of dance. In particular, Jane Desmond created an integrated approach engaging dance history and cultural studies; in the framework of her findings, dance is read as a primary social text. She emphasizes that movement style is an important mode of distinction between social groups, serving as a marker for the production of …

The Black Freedom Struggle And Civil Rights Labor Organizing In The Piedmont And Eastern North Carolina Tobacco Industry, Jennifer Wells

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines labor organizing in the U.S. South, specifically the Piedmont and eastern regions of North Carolina in the mid-twentieth century. It aims to uncover an often overlooked local history of civil rights labor organizing which challenged the southern status quo before America's 'mainstream' civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. This study argues that through labor organizing, African American tobacco workers challenged the class, gender, and race hierarchy of North Carolina's very profitable tobacco industry during the first half of the twentieth century. In doing so, the thesis contributes to the historiography of black working class protest, …

Nationalitaetenrecht: The South Slav Policies Of The Habsburg Monarchy, Sean Krummerich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The national development of the ethnic groups of the Habsburg Monarchy were influenced by the policies undertaken toward them by their rulers, the Austrian Germans and, after 1867, the Magyars of Hungary. Contrasts can be identified between those groups living in the Austrian part of the Monarchy and those living in the Kingdom of Hungary, a trend that can be identified in the Monarchy's South Slav populations (Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes), as this population inhabited territories on both sides of the dualist border. The present study examines the differences in the nationality policies toward the South Slavs on the part …

Postcolonial Religion And Motherhood In The Novels By Louise Erdrich And Alice Walker, Kateryna Chornokur

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a comparative analysis of the works of the Native American author Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine, Tracks) and the African American writer Alice Walker (The Color Purple). Originating from different cultural traditions, Native American and African American women writers address common themes in their novels because of their common colonial background. One of the main themes in their writings is that of religion. Despite becoming victims of Christianity used as a means of cultural colonization, both African American and Native American communities reinterpret it in terms of their traditional religious beliefs and create a new, unique hybridized form …

"You Understand Me Now": Sampling Nina Simone In Hip Hop, Amanda Renae Modell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The overarching goal of this research is to explicate the implications of hip hop artists sampling Nina Simone's music in their work. By regarding Simone as a critical social theorist in her own right, one can hear the ways that hip hop artists are mobilizing her tradition of socially active self-definition from the Civil Rights/Black Power era(s) in the post-2000 United States. By examining both the lyrics and the instrumental compositions of Lil Wayne, Juelz Santana, Common, Tony Moon, Talib Kweli, Mary J. Blige and Will.I.Am, G-Unit and Timbaland, and bearing in mind the intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender, …

Understanding Social Integration And Student Involvement As Factors Of Self-Reported Gains For African American Undergraduate Women, Edna Jones Miller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Diversity of student populations within higher education has considerably increased, particularly for women and minority populations, which is indicative of greater access to education toward a college degree. However, increased diversity of student populations has introduced a new set of challenges for higher education administrators in that it is becoming increasingly difficult for administrators to maintain current educational methods when considering the changing needs of matriculating students. As a result, higher education institutions are compelled to strategize beyond the "one-size-fits all" approach in the way teaching and support services are delivered in order to provide a more holistic approach to …

The Indigenous Movement And The Struggle For Political Representation In Bolivia, Angelica T. Nieves

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The theme of ethnic identity in politics is gaining importance in countries such as Bolivia, where people recently elected their first indigenous President. The Indigenous movement has been able to incorporate themselves in the state apparatus and have produced new political policies and constitutional instruments. They represent an alternative to the "white" political elites who governed them for many decades. This study analyzes the dynamics within the Indigenous social movement in Bolivia and how they reinforced a composite vision of a participatory democratic society through political representation. The results of this participation (and, moreover, political representation) can be seen in …

The Tyranny Of Plot: Anzia Yezierska's Struggle To Free The Voices Of Her Community Through The Autobiographical Self, Kristie Kelly Dowling

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the very different ways that both the novel and autobiography mediate individual and group identities by comparing Anzia Yezierska's novel Salome of the Tenements to her autobiography Red Ribbon on a White Horse. Yezierska's texts establish the inherent difference between the novel and autobiography in that her novels contribute to the dominant ideology by colluding with the capitalist narrative of individualism while her autobiography resists that very narrative. In calling forth the multiple voices of her community, her autobiography reveals, in a series of metatextual comments, the fictional nature of the self and autobiography. Comparing these …

Ethnic Identities Among Second-Generation Haitian Young Adults In Tampa Bay, Florida: An Analysis Of The Reported Influence Of Ethnic Organizational Involvement On Disaster Response After The Earthquake Of 2010, Herrica Telus

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drawing upon 20 in-depth interviews with second generation Haitian young adults, I examined the ethnic identities and the involvement in ethnic organizations of the respondents. This study pays particular attention to how involvement in ethnic organizations influenced how the second generation Haitians believed the earthquake affected their identities and how they ultimately responded to the earthquake. Several of the findings revealed differences in how and why the respondents chose to ethnically identify such as Haitian, Haitian-American, black Haitian. The respondents' choice to join an ethnic organization was driven by different desires but the perceived influence of the organization on their …

Shifting Blackness: How The Arts Revolutionize Black Identity In The Postmodern West, Reginald Eldridge Jr

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The contemporary experiences of racially marginalized people in the West are affected deeply by the hegemonic capitalist Orthodox cultural codes, or episteme, in which blackness operates as the symbol of Chaos. As it relates to people of African descent, these affects are marked by a denial of the black person's full status as an unproblematic subject, by ontological voids arising from the practice of enslavement over the past centuries, and by problems of representation within the West, where examples and points of reference for black identity are always tied up with conflicting interests.

Utilizing Sylvia Wynter's model of the Ceremony …