African History Commons^™

Aguaaaa!!!, Cory Villegas

Theses and Dissertations

“AGUA” is a call for new models of learning and sharing, celebrating the diasporic as a place of global revolution. Salsa, rooted in Latin American and Afro-Caribbean histories, is choreographer Cory Villegas’s expression of cultural legacy. As an Afro-diasporic dance, Salsa carries the wealth and variety of African and Indigenous roots. Villegas contextualizes her thesis event “Las Leyendas: An Afro Cuban Suite,” presenting herself and her troupe Soul Dance Co. as evidence that contradicts the erasure of Latin & Caribbean Culture in US dance history. The paper uses English and Spanish, written, visual, and oral materials with an accompanying webpage.

Lighting The Way Of The Learner: Towards A Social Virtue Epistemology In Aḥmad Al-Ṣaghīr’S The Faqīh’S Lantern, Amani Khelifa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis offers an original translation and analysis of a West African didactic poem in Islamic ethics and law, by the Mālikī-Ashʿarī Mauritanian scholar Aḥmad al-Ṣaghīr (d. 1272 AH/1856 CE) called The Faqīh’s Lantern (Miṣbāḥ al-Faqīh). In addition to the critical translation, I examine the poem thematically through the lens of social virtue epistemology. Chapter 1 sketches the background of the text and author, positioning the author historically as a product of a rich scholarly and pedagogical tradition while noting Mauritania’s contemporary place in the North American Muslim imagination. Chapter 2 is the translation of the text, making …

Historical Interpretations And Their Legacies: Dialectical Materialism And The Umayyad Conquest Of Morocco, Grayson Shaw

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The death of the Prophet in the 7th century paved the way for the Umayyad Caliphate, one of the largest empires by land to exist in human history. Most notably, the Umayyads controlled a territory that spanned from India across North Africa into Spain. Along this expansionary route, the Arab Umayyads interacted with, integrated, and fought local indigenous Amazigh people all along Northern Africa into Morocco. Historical records about the Umayyad influence in Morocco are widely varied, ranging from later Abbasaid records to 20th century European interpretations. At its core, the Umayyad conquest of Morocco has fallen victim to interpretations …

Gender, Race, And Religion In An African Enlightenment, Jonathan D. Lyonhart

Journal of Religion & Film

Black Panther (2018) not only heralded a new future for representation in big-budget films but also gave an alternative vision of the past, one which recasts the Enlightenment within an African context. By going through its technological enlightenment in isolation from Western ideals and dominance, Wakanda opens a space for reflecting on alternate ways progress can—and still might—unfold. More specifically, this alternative history creates room for reimagining how modernity—with its myriad social, scientific, and religious paradigm shifts—could have negotiated questions of race, and, in turn, how race could have informed and redirected some of the lesser impulses of modernity. Similar …

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s …

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Pre-Event Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s …

Healing Through Mother Earth, Taylor A. Russell

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis deals with mental health, with a focus on Black women. Historically, Black women are often so compromised, being constant caregivers and helping everyone else, that they forget to help themselves, not having the time and financial means to do so. If we go back in the time of slavery, many Black women were taking care of slave owners' children and suckling the white women’s babies instead of their own. By the time they got home and after diligently caring for other people’s children they were focused on their own children, who they had been away from for hours …

Fraternity, Martyrdom And Peace In Burundi: The Forty Servants Of God Of Buta, Jodi Mikalachki

Journal of Global Catholicism

During Burundi's 1993-2005 civil war, students at Buta Minor Seminary were ordered at gunpoint to separate by ethnicity—Hutus over here, Tutsis over there! They chose instead to join hands and affirm their common identity as children of God. The forty students killed were quickly proclaimed martyrs of fraternity. Their costly solidarity defused the cry for reprisals and continues to inspire Burundians and others on the path of reconciliation. Drawing on fifty interviews with survivors, parents of martyrs, neighbors, religious leaders and other Burundian intellectuals, this essay examines how Burundian Catholics understand the significance of the Buta martyrdom to their …

A Devised Ethnodrama: Conscious Voices, Sonia Pasqual

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Using techniques of storytelling, dance, poems, and monologues in the process of re-enacting life stories, the ensemble display issues that may be impeding society’s growth—discrimination against body image, blackness, females, and LGBTQ individuals. In addition, engagement in storytelling and performance can help the audience increase their cognitive skills, empathy, and ability to live a communal life. This evidence-based practice can transform lives and society. It has the potential of continuing to other faculties and with other departments, such as film, musical, and additional narratives. This specific work could be extended out beyond art and education into populations of any communities …

Rereading Albert Camus’ The Plague During A Pandemic: An African’S Review, Stephen O. Owino

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

An Actor's Process In Bridging The Gap Between First-Generation And Multi-Generational African-American Identities., Mutiyat Ade-Salu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reflects my process assimilating into the role of Chelle in the production of Detroit '67 at the University of Louisville. Although there have been instances of actors crossing lines of gender, nationality, race, and even sexuality, to perform roles in contemporary theatre, discussion about generational differences is almost non-existent. Through historical research, first-hand interviews, and conventional acting methods, I explore the world of my role, searching for spirituality, authenticity, and identity. Additionally, I explain my use of The WAY Method ®, a process I began creating in 2014 to help actors be clear with who they are before …

Anton Wilhelm Amo's Philosophy And Reception: From The Origins Through The Encyclopédie, Dwight Kenneth Lewis Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Diversity and the concept of race are, or should be, central concerns both for the history of philosophy and for our current political reality. Within academic philosophy, these concerns are expressed in the growing demand for minority representation within the canon, which is overwhelmingly white and male, especially in early modern philosophy. Furthermore, until now, historians of philosophy have not spent the time necessary to uncover various designations such as “Negro”, “Moor”, “Ethiopian”, etc., in early modern Europe, and from there to understand how these shaped philosophical reflections on human diversity. In my research, I relate Anton Wilhelm Amo (c. …

The Politics Of Wounds, Jonathan Nash

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What configuration of strategies and discourses enable the white male and settler body politic to render itself as simultaneously wounded and invulnerable? I contextualize this question by reading the discursive continuities between Euro-America’s War on Terror post-9/11 and Algeria’s War for Independence. By interrogating political-philosophical responses to September 11, 2001 beside American rhetoric of a wounded nation, I argue that white nationalism, as a mode of settler colonialism, appropriates the discourses of political wounding to imagine and legitimize a narrative of white hurt and white victimhood; in effect, reproducing and hardening the borders of the nation-state. Additionally, by turning to …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

What Lies In The Gray: Creative Analytic Pieces On The Formation And Evolution Of Beliefs In Masxha, Robin Mwai

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this project was to look at how members of Durban's Masxha township develop their belief systems and ideas about their world. This topic was developed out of a desire to better understand the factors that promote or inhibit individuals from changing their mind about topics relating to their community, society, and culture. I sought to gain a deeper understanding of the specific context of Masxha and the experiences and lives of those with whom I spoke.

To accomplish the goal of learning from lived experiences, this study employed a narrative inquiry approach. Using loosely-structured interviews involving eight …

The Willfulness Of A Missing Frame: Ahmed Zaki And The Politics Of Visual Resistance, Miriam M. Gabriel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ahmed Zaki (1949-2005) is one of Egyptian cinema’s most prominent leading actors, with work spanning three decades of critical films that informed a generation’s visual register of masculinity. However, the beginnings of his career were marked by public skepticism around his place as a leading actor due to him being “too dark” and “too poor”; as his career continued to flourish, those very markings of racing and classing Zaki because a foundation for increasingly stamping his public image with the “authenticity” of an Egyptian citizen. At a particularly neoliberal moment in the Egyptian economy, that of the early 80s, new …

Black Matter, Kahlil Irving

Graduate School of Art Theses

History as we know it, is inherited. Racism, fascism, white supremacy, and Eurocentric dominance have been presented as normal and acceptable within our society for many years. This has allowed police officers to execute Black American’s and not be acquitted for their horrendous crimes. As an activist I want to challenge the status quo. As an artist I am interested in investigating how I can present ideas embody or reflect contemporary issues and concerns. Using different colors can aggressively change how an object is perceived. Historical objects hold many important.

I explore many mediums, but an anchor material that I …

Spiritual Journeys: A Study Of Ifá /Òrìṣà Practitioners In The United States Initiated In Nigeria, Tony Van Der Meer

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to understand the culture of one of the newest branches of traditional Yorùbá Ifá/Òrìṣà practice in the United States from practitioners born in the United States that were initiated in Nigeria, West Africa.The epistemology of the Ifá/Òrìṣà belief system in the United States has been based on the history and influence of Regla de Ocha or Santeria that developed out of Cuban innovation and practice.This is an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic study that pulls from participant observation, field notes, interviews, and photos as data.The central question of this dissertation is what are the challenges and …

The French Revolution In The French-Algerian War (1954-1962): Historical Analogy And The Limits Of French Historical Reason, Timothy Scott Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the use of the French Revolution as an explanatory device for discussing the French-Algerian War (1954-1962). Anticolonial intellectuals in France invoked the French Revolution to explain their reasons for supporting colonial reform as well as their solidarity with Algerian nationalist aims. Through an examination of intellectuals’ public interventions alongside French and Algerian historical narratives, I examine the ways in which historical alignment signaled political and cultural distance between France and Algeria. Making an independent Algeria analogous to eighteenth-century revolutionary France lent political and conceptual legitimacy to Algerian claims to an independent national identity while also reinforcing the …

Race, Class And Wealth: Thomas Gainsborough's Mr. And Mrs. Andrews (1750) And Yinka Shonibare's Mr. And Mrs. Andrews Without Their Heads (1998), Yema Thomas

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

The Interaction Of Music And Dance In Africa, Dan Rager

Dan Rager

The Adversity Pop Culture Has Posed, Darel Joseph

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

I am a collage artist working with multiple mediums such as paint, photography, video, audio, and performance. As a New Orleans’ native, I have a unique history that is unflattering, for my history echoes that of America’s historical misdeeds. I make sociopolitical art because I am of a historically oppressed people. I make art that celebrates my diverse culture that is a collage of Native American, African, and New Orleans’ French Creole.

Mobilizing Insurgent Pasts Toward Decolonial Futures, Patrick Crowley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project is an inquiry into modes of decolonial resistance that mobilize alternative relationships to the past against the modern/colonial writing of history from a Eurocentric perspective taken as universal. I contend that knowledges and memories rooted in non-Western cultural traditions have formed the epistemological basis for ongoing opposition to the hegemonic conception of history as the unfolding of global structural transformations on a single, homogenous timescale. I examine works by Frantz Fanon, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Zapatista videomakers that expressly reject a Eurocentric, monotopic perspective of history. My objective is to demonstrate the decolonial efforts of intellectuals and ordinary people …

What Should We Do With The Social Construct Of Race?, Jason A. Gordon

Senior Theses and Projects

Today, race is something that many people still consider to be an essential component of their identities. Even though race has been proven to be nothing more than a social construct, it still is in many regards something that the people living in our society tend take for granted. In this paper, the concept of race will be critically examined and analyzed. The history of race will be closely followed and it will be discussed as to whether or not this social construct is something worth preserving.

“Don't Call Me A Student-Athlete”: The Effect Of Identity Priming On Stereotype Threat For Academically Engaged African American College Athletes, Keith Harrison

Dr. C. Keith Harrison

Academically engaged African American college athletes are most susceptible to stereotype threat in the classroom when the context links their unique status as both scholar and athlete. After completing a measure of academic engagement, African American and White college athletes completed a test of verbal reasoning. To vary stereotype threat, they first indicated their status as a scholar-athlete, an athlete, or as a research participant on the cover page. Compared to the other groups, academically engaged African American college athletes performed poorly on the difficult test items when primed for their athletic identity, but they performed worse on both the …

“Don't Call Me A Student-Athlete”: The Effect Of Identity Priming On Stereotype Threat For Academically Engaged African American College Athletes, Keith Harrison

EGS Content

Academically engaged African American college athletes are most susceptible to stereotype threat in the classroom when the context links their unique status as both scholar and athlete. After completing a measure of academic engagement, African American and White college athletes completed a test of verbal reasoning. To vary stereotype threat, they first indicated their status as a scholar-athlete, an athlete, or as a research participant on the cover page. Compared to the other groups, academically engaged African American college athletes performed poorly on the difficult test items when primed for their athletic identity, but they performed worse on both the …

Purposeful Engagement Of First-Year Division I Student-Athletes, Keith Harrison

Dr. C. Keith Harrison

This study examined the extent to which transitioning, first-year student-athletes engage in educationally sound activities in college. The sample included 147 revenue and nonrevenue first-year student-athletes who were surveyed at four large Division 1-A universities. Findings revealed that revenue and nonrevenue first-year student athletes differed regarding their academic and athletic identities. Transitioning revenue student-athletes rated themselves as having slightly higher athletic identities, yet lower academic identities compared to their nonrevenue counterparts. The findings from this study also indicated that the kinds of effective educational practices that first-year student-athletes engage in have a positive influence on their academic self-concept. These findings …

White College Students' Explanations Of White (And Black) Athletic Performance: A Qualitative Investigation Of White College Students, Harrison

EGS Content

No abstract provided.

A Conceptual Model Of Academic Success For Student-Athletes, Keith Harrison

EGS Content

Concern over the academic talent development of Division I student–athletes has led to increased research to explain variations in their academic performance. Although a substantial amount of attention has been given to the relationship between student–athletes and their levels of academic success, there remain critical theoretical and analytical gaps. The purpose of this article is to develop a conceptual model to understand and explain the cumulative processes and characteristics—as a whole and in stages—that influence academic success for Division I student–athletes. Research on student–athletes and academic success is reviewed and synthesized to provide a rationale for the basic elements of …

Purposeful Engagement Of First-Year Division I Student-Athletes, Keith Harrison

EGS Content

This study examined the extent to which transitioning, first-year student-athletes engage in educationally sound activities in college. The sample included 147 revenue and nonrevenue first-year student-athletes who were surveyed at four large Division 1-A universities. Findings revealed that revenue and nonrevenue first-year student athletes differed regarding their academic and athletic identities. Transitioning revenue student-athletes rated themselves as having slightly higher athletic identities, yet lower academic identities compared to their nonrevenue counterparts. The findings from this study also indicated that the kinds of effective educational practices that first-year student-athletes engage in have a positive influence on their academic self-concept. These findings …