A Journey To A Black Woman’S (Read Black Girl’S) Joy And Her Story Of Coming Home, Brittany Lauren Brock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an auto/ethnography about the self-actualizing journey of reclaiming storytelling as my native tongue and my journey to joy. Throughout, using my story and the stories of so many others, I not only lay out the wounds (the pain, the loss, then the hope that comes) within the academy and outside in the world but I also use storytelling as a tool of healing—my tool of healing—to show how I wrote myself free.

When Black women (read Black girls) go through The Reckoning (the moment we realize something isn’t right with how we are perceived by others) …

Building The Body, Jasmine Flowers

Masters Theses

Bodies and space co-produce each other and the process of co-production originates racializing and gendering work.

The concept, thesis, and subsequent design are informed by the historical context around the House for Josephine Baker by Adolf Loos. Presented here is the culmination of research which grounds itself in the relationship between Primitivism and Modernism, theory on the body and flesh, architectural graphic standards, spectacle, gaze, surveillance, hypervisibility, invisibility, implications of privacy versus publicity, expressions of Blackness and its place in femmehood (a neologism that expands “womanhood” to be trans-inclusive), all of which directly engage in co-production.

This co-production changes how …

Victim Or Villain: Female Resilience And Agency In The Face Of Trauma In Chimamanda Adichie’S, Purple Hibiscus (2003) And Tsitsi Dangarembga’S, Nervous Conditions (1988), Adaobi Juliet Chukwuma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As long as disparities persist in the way women are treated as compared to their male counterparts, the issue of gender will continue to call forth literary productions. For this reason, female writers are on a mission to dismantle the stereotypes that keep women confined to societal roles. Grounded in a feminist framework, this study focuses on the gender disparity theme in Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions. The aim is to examine how these writers represent the trauma of women living in an African patriarchal system. The traumatic experiences of the female characters in both texts …

Writing, Performance, Resistance: Examining Feminist Ideology And Theory In Theatre Since The Second Wave, Olivia Cross

Theater Honors Papers

This project seeks to identify and analyze how feminist theatre is informed by theory and activism in its resistance against white, heteronormative, and patriarchal hegemony offstage through onstage representation. By identifying three consistent themes of gender & sexuality, race, and trauma and the methods used to effectively convey them to an audience, feminist theatre displays how advocacy takes unique forms to uproot the status quo. Furthermore, this research highlights how theatre is a viable and rich outlet for feminist intellectual history, displaying its versatility as a frame of analysis.

Restorative Practices In English Language Arts: My Journey Towards Linguistic Justice, Ariana Skeese

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

In this final portfolio, I examine anti-racist pedagogy in English Language Arts Education.

‘Poetry Is Not A Luxury’, Rage Should Not Be A Privilege: The Potential Power Of The ‘Racial Imaginary’, Georgia Mcgovern

CMC Senior Theses

Female rage exists outside of the constructed masculine ideal of anger. To examine female rage, one must analyze the intersections between gender and race. I examine white women's privilege and access to female rage in reality and the fictional world. I explore Black Feminist poetry as a form of storage for rage at gender-based prejudice, racial injustice, and their intersection. Using Myisha Cherry’s term “Lordean Rage”, I recognize this specialized manifestation of female rage as an artistic, intergenerational source of energy for change.

I examine Claudia Rankine’s term “racial imaginary” as an imaginative space in which white people draw lines …

Witnessing Conspiracy Theories: Developing An Intersectional Approach To Conspiracy Theory Research, David Guignion

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation proposes an intersectional approach to conspiracy theory research that engages conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists by considering their proximity and affiliations with hegemonic power structures. Against challenges to conspiracy theories based on their lack of empirical legitimacy (Rosenblum and Muirhead 2019) and building on arguments that propound their status as “subjugated knowledges” (Bratich 2008), this dissertation argues that conspiracy theories can be vectors of anti-oppressive resistance against systemic forces that disenfranchise racial, gender, and class minorities. Conspiracy theories are not a homogenous phenomenon; they are particular instances of potentially generative suspicion against powerful forces. The dissertation deploys Kelly …

Woman Flytrap, Brianna Jo Hobson

Student Theses and Dissertations

Woman FlyTrap is a short story zine collection that explores the topic of sexual violence through the perpetrator and victim relationship with an explicit lens. Replete with cultural and entomological themes and motifs, Woman Flytrap seeks to remind survivors that we are not alone. In our bodies or in our lives. Neither in the world. There are over a million insects to every human, proving that there is strength in numbers. All five stories in the collection present different abstracts: revenge, transformation, justice, healing, body image, self-harm, mourning, etc. There is also a playlist and a section about the author. …

Becoming “Living Matter”: Alive Things In Octavia Butler’S Xenogenesis Series, Zackary Gregory

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This project seeks to explore the ways Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy complicates humans' understandings of subjectivity and human exceptionalism by challenging the concept of Otherness. Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series focuses on adaptability and acceptance of the nonhuman Other by depicting a forced encounter between humans and an alien species called the Oankali. Characters within the series grapple with a dynamic understanding of themselves, having to renegotiate the concept of the Other as they deal with intelligent nonhuman Beings and animate objects. Further, characters in the series are coerced into accepting the transformation of humanity into something other than human as …

Contextualizing Feminism Within Igbo History And An Analysis Of The Works Of Ngozi Anyanwu, Chisom Awachie

Theatre Thesis - Written Thesis

Throughout Nigeria’s history, Igbo women have contended with violence from colonial and imperialist forces and misogyny from the Igbo men in their communities. In solidarity with one another, Igbo women have continued to fight back to ensure their voices are heard in politics and access to professional careers. The Nigerian- and Igbo-American playwright Ngozi Anyanwu writes about Igbo women who assert themselves and maintain their agency throughout cultural and interpersonal conflicts, similar to these historical strategies. Anyanwu’s plays The Homecoming Queen, Good Grief, and My Name…is Beatrice feature women dealing with grief, sexual trauma, and access to reproductive healthcare between …

Steps Toward Healing From The Possessive Other: The Vital Role Of Fantastical Literature In Trauma Theory, Rebekah Izard

English (MA) Theses

Fantastical narratives such as fairy tales and magical realist literature utilizes fantastic and intangible spaces to unpack that which is often beyond the limitations imposed on our understanding by reality: the stunting experience of individual and generational traumas. This study aims to contribute to the current literary discourse’s understandings of fantastic literature and its subgenres as a tool for healing from trauma through the application of ontological notions of Selfhood and Otherness supplied by 20th century philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, and the notion of Orientalism by postcolonial scholar, Edward Said. The dialogue generated by these schools of thought provide a space …

Barriers To Outdoor Recreation For Marginalized Groups At The University Of Montana, Sabine R. Englert, Beatrix Frissell, Adrienne Liebert, Sophia Rodriquez, Margaret Jensen, Rachana Harris, Abby Doss

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Exclusion from outdoor recreation reflects legacies of oppression of marginalized communities and makes access to the outdoors not equally available. In the United States, approximately 38% of Black Americans and 48% of Hispanic Americans participated in outdoor recreation in 2020. This is compared to 55% participation among Caucasian Americans. Many other intersecting identities are actively excluded, including people with disabilities, fat populations, and members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community; furthermore, class-based hierarchies are shown through the restricted outdoor access of low-income populations.

While numerous studies show a lack of diversity in outdoor recreation, little to no research has been conducted on …

Intersections Of Environmentalism, Chemistry, And Racism: An Experimental Study Of Halobenzene Hydrogenolysis And Critical Communication Studies Of Equitable Learning Practices Rooted In Black Feminism, Lauren O. Babb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Increasing concentrations of fluorinated aromatic compounds in surface water, groundwater, and soil pose threats to the environment. Fundamental studies that elucidate mechanisms of dehalogenation for C-X compounds (where X represents a halide) are required to develop effective remediation strategies. For halogenated benzenes, previously published research has suggested that the strength of the C-X bond is not rate-determining in the overall rate of dehalogenation. Instead, the rate-determining step has been hypothesized to be adsorption of the C-X compound onto the surface of a catalyst. Building on this hypothesis, in this work, we examine the reaction kinetics of fluorobenzene conversion to benzene, …

Defining Black Masculinities: Intersectional Analyses Of Gender, Race And Sexuality In Caribbean And Latin American Literature, 1955 To Present, Jerry Eugene Scruggs Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

The objective of my dissertation is to define and construct parameters for analyzing the Afro-descendant male experience in four specific texts: Mi compadre el General Sol [General Sun, My Brother] (1955), Adire y el tiempo roto [Adire and Broken Time] (1967), Sortilégio II: mistério negro de Zumbi redivivo [Sorcery 2: Black Mystery of Resurrected Zumbí] (1979), and Negro: Este color que me queda bonito [Black: This Color Looks Good on Me] (2013). Black masculinities are distinct and this study sets five parameters: 1) Sexual Prowess, 2) Contentious relationship with the White woman, 3) Violence and Toxic Masculinity, 4) Emotive Numbness, …

How Marlon T. Riggs Queered The Documentary Form, Anthony M. Sweeney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Marlon T. Riggs’s documentary films and their paratextual elements are rooted in his intersectional identities as a Black and gay man. His activist goal of Black gay liberation was based on what he saw as deeply engrained internal and external racist and homophobic societal structures that subjugated Black queers. In this thesis, I place research from Black cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, and film studies in conversation with one another to show how Riggs’s filmography is an example of queer form. In doing so, I attempt to redefine the focus of the scholarship on Riggs from an avant-garde filmmaker …

Conjuring New Worlds: Black Women’S Speculative Fiction And The Restructuring Of Blackness, Chloe Hunt

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation, Conjuring New Worlds: Black Women’s Speculative Fiction and the Restructuring of Blackness, examines Black speculative fiction as a site of theorization within worlds where Black existence has not already been pre-determined by the forces of slavery and ideologies of race and culture in a white supremacist world. In this sense, my dissertation models ways of reading Black literature that demonstrates how Blackness can disturb, rather than reproduce, notions of racial meaning and the Human. I argue that writers of Black speculative fiction go beyond the creation of alternative realities to produce sites that allow for nearly limitless …

“In The Skin I’M In…I Represent A Different Version Of What Help Looks Like:” Black Women Sport Psychology Professional’S Experiences In Applied Sport Psychology, Sharon R. Couch

Doctoral Dissertations

Black Feminist Applied Sport Psychology (BFASP) is a culturally inclusive theoretical framework for centering Black women’s experiences in applied sport psychology (Carter et al., 2020; Couch et al., 2022). For the past two decades, (White) Feminist applied sport psychology professionals (FASPPs) described the experiences of Black women as unique but were overlooked in research and participant pools due to the prioritization of White women's and Black male sport experiences. (Carter & Davila, 2017; Carter & Prewitt-White, 2014; Gill, 2020; Hyman et al., 2021). The purpose of this study was to explore the life and work experiences of BASPPs (i.e., faculty, …

More Than The Defiant Few: Lost Womanhood And Necro Women Dismantling Nineteenth-Century Gender Ideologies, Vicki Vanbrocklin

English Language and Literature ETDs

Too many scholars still rely on adjectives such as deviant, unruly, dangerous, and wild to describe women who interrogate rigid forms of womanhood, especially women of color. My project intervenes in nineteenth-century womanhood discussions, which have traditionally solidified three main categories: Republican, True, and New Womanhood. Between True Womanhood in the mid-nineteenth century and the late nineteenth-century concept of New Womanhood lies an overlooked category aptly understood as Lost Womanhood. I focus on newspaper archives, archival research, and imaginative literature to find “lost” women who critiqued a patriarchal system that thrives on women living in a status akin to being …

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

Historical Sisters: Black Feminist Actions Across History And Literary Studies, Jazz A. Milligan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis seeks to understand how the actions of Black women from the past have inspired the modern Black female literary movement. This thesis focuses on three historical women: Phillis Wheatley, Elizabeth Freeman, and Cathay Williams, and their literary sisters: bell hooks, Barbara Smith, and Patricia Hill Collins. By viewing the lives of these historical women through a modern-day lens, we can understand how their actions created a ripple effect that Black women are still discussing today. Black feminism did not start in a vacuum, and the actions of everyday Black women have pushed us forward to being more accepting …

Surveilling The Fat Disidencia: Policing The Bodies Of Plus-Size Black Women On Instagram, Daniela V. Verdejo Salazar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Instagram has shaped how we network and share content with others, making interactions far more accessible for everyone who uses this platform daily. Unfortunately, it has also given space to some surveilling mechanisms that tend to police and norm how users and their bodies should present themselves to the rest of the world.

The body can be understood as a manifestation, a presence, and a performance. As Judith Butler argues, the body is also a political space where ideas of resistance and vulnerability take place, and I will understand the body as a combination of the physical manifestation of it …

Are High Levels Of Educator Bias Associated With The Disproportionate Discipline Of Black Students?, Melissa Ann Ramos

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Data on school discipline inequities have shown disproportionate numbers of Black students suspended and expelled compared to their non-Black counterparts. Despite the implementation of evidence-based solutions such as positive behavior supports and intervention, educator professional development, and restorative practices aimed at closing the racial discipline gap, little to no change has occurred. Critical Race Theory is used as a lens for viewing racial hierarchies as a socially constructed tool to oppress people of color. This oppression can be seen in various aspects of society and in education, especially in school discipline. It is fueled by biases, both implicit and explicit. …

Properly Unhinged: A Collection Of Poems, Madison Everett

Honors Projects

This is a collection of poems that explores the identities I possess and am a part of. These identities include being half black and half white, clinically diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Generalize Anxiety Disorder, pansexual or bisexual or something altogether different (depending on the day), and cis gendered womanhood. I also explore what a poem is and what a poem is not, and how there is very little difference between the two. In a lot of ways, this is an exploration into myself and what it means to be within the world. What does it mean to …

Rape: A Settler-Colonial And Anti-Black Project, Cristy A. Dougherty

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

White feminist theorizations of rape privilege patriarchy as the main source of gender violence, ultimately centering white cisgender women. In doing so, white women are treated as subject in anti-rape discourse while the violence inflicted on women of color is rendered as secondary and insignificant. Conversely, Indigenous and Black feminist analytics center Indigenous and Black women’s experiences with sexual violence, ultimately pointing to the ways in which rape has been used as a tool to perpetuate heteropatriarchy, settler-colonialism, and anti- Black racism. For instance, Deer (2015) explains that Indigenous women experience disproportionately high rates of sexual violence that spans generations. …

Black Feminist Thought, Interrupted: Dissecting The Voice Of Black Feminists In The Blogosphere And Their Engagement With Platform Affordances, Dawn G. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

BLACK FEMINIST THOUGHT, INTERRUPTED

DISSECTING THE VOICE OF BLACK FEMINISTS IN THE BLOGOSPHERE AND THEIR ENGAGEMENT WITH PLATFORM AFFORDANCES

By Dawn G. Johnson, Ph.D

A dissertation submitted to the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Media, Art, and Text Department in the College of Humanities and Sciences

Virginia Commonwealth University, 2021

Dissertation Chair: Dr. Archana Pathak, Associate Professor, Dept. of Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University

Black women that have long searched for spaces to be creative and have voice due to their …

Protest Music In Response To The United States’ Oppressive Political Culture: An Analysis Of Beyoncé'S "Freedom" And Janelle Monáe's "Americans", Jessica Torrey

HMC Senior Theses

This paper aims to study a popular musical artist’s responsibility towards the empowerment of marginalized communities in the United States through an analysis of the songs “Freedom” by Beyoncé and “Americans” by Janelle Monáe. These songs will be analyzed in conjunction with the political climate during the time of their fabrication and release as well as the political climates discussed in the songs themselves. This paper presents a thorough analysis of the lyrical and musical components of both songs as well as an analysis of a specific performance of both songs. These analyses will be presented in conversation with many …

Exploring The Rhetorical Power Of Speculative Fiction Through Jewelle Gomez’S The Gilda Stories And Octavia Butler’S Fledgling, Monique Dixon

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

There are apparent similarities between Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories and Octavia Butler’s Fledgling. However, this thesis will demonstrate that they share more than similar subject matter and yet differ in substantial ways. Utilizing Black feminist theory and alternative rhetoric this thesis examines how Gomez and Butler harness the potential of speculative fiction to critique the world around them and imagine an alternative world for those who are intersectionally marginalized.

The Evolution Of Defining Rape In The United States, Sophia Rhoades

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Representations Of Hustling Women: The Figure Of The Black Sex Worker In Ann Petry’S The Street And Louise Meriwether’S Daddy Was A Number Runner, Deborah L. Uzurin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis provides a close reading of Ann Petry’s The Street (1946) and Louise Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner (1970) by analyzing how these two black women authors wrote about sex work and black women sex workers in their novels. Black women writers in the mid-twentieth century were reluctant to write about black women’s sexuality as a result of discourses of racial uplift that rejected the white supremacist stereotype of the hypersexual black woman. While not the focus of their novels, the inclusion of sex workers in their fictional narratives provide a complicated representation of a particular form of …

“I’M Real I Thought I Told Ya”: Developing Critical Media Literacy Through U.S. Latinx Digital Media Representations, Solange T. Castellar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how audiences engage with U.S. Latinx media representations through the practice of critical media literacy. I interrogate how media consumers construct critical media literacy through interacting with U.S. Latinx figures on digital media platforms, particularly on the social-media app, Twitter, and the user-generated video content platform, YouTube. Throughout this thesis, I argue that users on these platforms who engage with U.S. Latinx pop culture figures, like Jennifer Lopez and Belcalis Almanzar (Cardi B), read, digest, and comprehend a variety of multimedia images, texts, or videos, and that this engagement becomes an accessible form of critical media literacy, …