African American Studies Commons^™

Finding The Sound: The Women Of El Paso Punk Rock, Tara Martin Lopez

CLASP Lecture Series

"Finding the Sound: The Women of El Paso Punk Rock", is a a presentation by Dr. Tara López, Assistant Professor and Director of the Ethnic Studies program. In López's talk, she will shed light on how women of the El Paso punk rock scene—particularly the Chicanas that dominated punk in the mid-1990s—used music to develop a fierce set of sonic expressions and innovations. By exploring opportunities available in this popular format, López invites us to reconsider how the messages that comprise these "musicworlds" illuminate the wide array of Chicanas engaged in the El Paso punk scene. From girls furtively Xeroxing …

Developing More Equitable And Critically Conscious Organizations: Testimonios And Critical Platicas With Black And Latino/X Lgbtq+ Male Chrd Leaders, Mario Burton

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation connects the recent DEIB movement within organizations to larger social justice movements, specifically those that impact workers and the workplace. Critical human resource development (CHRD) professionals, who serve as “insider activists”, are highlighted due to their work to continue movement objectives within organizations. Through testimonios and critical platicas, this study explores how Black and Latino/x LGBTQ+ CHRD professionals, in particular, are experiencing the workplace, especially as it relates to their engagement with how DEIB is practiced within organizations. Through this study, these professionals provide insights into the ways that workplaces can be redesigned and reimagined to be …

Crying In The Classroom: Teaching (Through A Lack Of) Racial Empathy, Brittney Miles

Feminist Pedagogy

Intense emotions in classrooms are often interpreted unfavorably because of how bodies can disrupt a space that centers the mind. However, bodies can also reflect students’ and educators’ emotional relationships with course material. Through an elucidative reflection on the pedagogical power of racialized emotions, this critical commentary considers the transgressive possibilities of racial empathy as a Black feminist epistemology. As a Black woman graduate student instructor, tensions emerge in classrooms around what it may mean when Black students and I are crying, and white students are not. Intense emotions, or the lack thereof, complicate the politics of power, responsibility, emotional …

Resistance/Refusal Of Violence In The Neoliberal City: Black Lgbtq+ Communities In Chicago And New York (1989 – Present), Marc Ridgell

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

Since the 1980s, Black queer and trans communities across U.S. cities have experienced racist and classist exclusion from gay neighborhoods, police and interpersonal violence in neighborhoods more generally, and medical racism in the HIV/AIDS crisis. Despite these forms of antiblack and anti-queer oppression, Black queer and trans people have performed acts of resistance and refusal to build community and experience better worlds. This research project examines how Black LGBTQ+ communities have responded to systems of racism, classism, queerphobia, and misogyny by claiming their “right to the city.” Specifically, this project explores how Black LGBTQ+ people in both Chicago and New …

Empowered Presence: Theorizing An Afrocentric Performance Of Leadership By African American Women, Sharon Wamble-King

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

There is a paucity of theorizing concerning leadership enactments performed by African American women. The performances have been marginalized and obscured within the Western leadership canon as they fall outside its epistemological boundaries; they have also been sidelined within Critical Leadership Studies. This study employed Afrocentricity as a decolonizing paradigm and Africology as the research methodology to describe and define a leadership phenomenon enacted by African American women. Setting aside Western conceptions of leadership, focus groups of African American women examined video excerpts of Africana women’s oral performances through an Africological lens. Participants’ Afrocentric-oriented perceptions sparked collective storytelling and Meaning-Making …

Reading The Traumatic Moment: The Role Of Socioeconomic Systems In The Color Purple And The Bluest Eye, Andrea Doll

Undergraduate Theses

There are many points of sameness between Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Both novels occur in the mid-20th century and focus on protagonists within the same race, gender, and relative class. Of all the similarities between the texts, the most influential is the trauma, sexual and otherwise, shared between Pecola Breedlove and Celie. Most notably, both characters experience incestuous rape resulting in pregnancy shortly after their first menstruation. Despite their numerous shared events and attributes, what occurs after their sexual trauma differs drastically for each character. At the end of The Color Purple …

Fashioning The Flapper: Clothing As A Catalyst For Social Change In 1920s America, Julia Wolffe

Honors Program Theses

Fashion has been a catalyst for social change throughout human history. Fashion in 1920s America in particular reflects society's rapidly evolving attitudes towards gender and race. Beginning with how corsetry heavily restricted women for nearly four hundred years up until the twentieth century, this thesis explores how clothing has acted as a tool for societal progression following World War I and Women's Suffrage and during the Jazz Age and The Harlem Renaissance. Specifically, this thesis examines how the influence of jazz music and dance that originated from Black American communities led to the creation of the flapper evening dress. The …

Where Are All The African-American Women Superintendents In California, Oregon, And Washington State?, Toniesha D. Webb

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

There are many African American women in leadership positions such as Assistant Superintendents, Network Superintendents, Directors, Principals, Assistant Principals, and Coaches. There is a disconnect for African American women in leadership and the highest position of authority in a school district. This leads to the question, what are the barriers, if any, that are limiting the amount of African American Women in the far western states to transition into Superintendent positions? In the reverse, what supports did the women who are superintendents have in their leadership ascension? Finally, what structures need to be developed and formalized in order to facilitate …

Carving Out Space: Black Feminist Theory, Morgan Barnes-Whitehead

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay………………………………..3

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes………..18

III. Textbook Critique……………………………..29

IV. New Textbook Entry…………………………..34

V. Bibliography………………………………….....35

First Things First: Black Women Situating Identity In The First-Year Faculty Experience, Nakia M. Gray-Nicolas, Angel Miles Nash

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The first year in the education professoriate is an ineluctably critical time to establish a pathway for long-term professional success mirroring a scholar’s commitment to positively influencing students, schools, and communities. For Black women, the distinguished dual marginalization that they endure based on race and gender creates challenges and opportunities during that important start to their career. Through Black feminist thought and portraiture’s intentional blurring of art, life, and scientific boundaries, two Black women tenure track faculty use their ‘pens as weapons’ to explicate the first-year professional experiences. They draw on their narratives and that of three other Black women …

Campus Racial Climate, Boundary Work And The Fear And Sexualization Of Black Masculinities On A Predominantly White University, Quaylan Allen

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This article presents data from a study of Black men and masculinities at a predominantly White university. I argue that the campus racial climate on predominantly White universities are important sites of boundary work where fear and sexualization of Black masculinities are normalized in ways that shape Black men’s social relations on college campuses. In doing so, I will share narrative data of how Black male college students perceive the campus racial climate, with a focus on how they are feared and sexualized in predominantly White spaces. I also analyze the ways in which they managed race, gender, and sexuality …

The Plexiglass Ceiling: Exploring Systemic Racism And Sexism In Public Leadership Positions, Kaylin Oliver

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The numbers of black women who hold leadership positions within public institutions are not correspondingly reflective of their overall numbers within public institutions. The focus of this study is to examine how race and gender discrimination prohibits black women from obtaining leadership positions in public institutions.. I propose a new theory Workplace Intersectional Infringement Theory (WIIT) to increase the efficacy of the study on black women in Public Institutions. Using snowball sampling, I conduct interviews with 11 black women who hold leadership positions across a variety of public institutions within the United States. I found a majority of the participants …

Counterstories Of Black High School Students And Graduates Of Nyc Independent Schools: A Narrative Case Study, Kahdeidra M. Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public youth resistance movements in 2019 and 2020 exposed the entrenchment of racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and classism across New York City independent schools (NYCIS). In order to support the imminent need for schools to provide effective diversity, inclusion, and equity supports that address broad issues of school climate, relationships, and pedagogy, there is a need to better understand the specific, hyperlocal experiences of Black/African Descendant (BAD) students, who occupy several unique, unexplored spaces in educational research. The following four research questions helped to conceptualize the experiences that support and hinder the academic success and long term well-being of BAD students …

Still We Rise: A Black Feminist Qualitative Inquiry Exploring Black Women’S Experiences On Twitter, Yvonne C. Morris

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

#WOCAffirmation was a hashtag created by April Reign in October 2017 in response to how Black women do not have the same supports of solidarity from populations who are non-Black women. Serving as a counterpublic, #WOCAffirmation embodied how Black women created space to affirm and amplify each other while also highlighting the harassment and abuse they experience in form of misogynoir on Twitter. As Black women are already under-researched in academia and fields within digital humanities, this study centered Black women while also highlighting oppressive systems of power in both physical and digital spaces. Using Black feminist thought as the …

“Beychella:” Beyoncé’S Homecoming To A Futuristic Queer Utopian, Jolie V. Brownell

sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies

Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella performance and 2019 Homecoming film set the stage for a radical Black queer reimagining. Yet, how can Beyoncé—who is straight—be located within a queer critique? In this paper, I argue that through a radical and political expansion of queer, the creative deployment of dis/identification, and the unapologetic expression of the erotic, Beyoncé performs an embodiment of queer of color critique. These creative gestures within “Beychella” invite viewers into a queer futuristic utopian and provide new creative modes to politically inhabit, resist, and reimagine interlocking systems of oppression.

Keywords: Beyoncé, queer, dis/identification, erotic, QoCC, …

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. …

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 …

Holding On To Who They Are: Pathways For Variations In Response To Toxic Workplace Behavior Among U.S. Intelligence Officers, Greta Creech

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

The U.S. intelligence community is a critical mission industry responsible for protecting lives and safety in ways that impact the global security environment. Research on the deleterious impact of toxic workplace behavior on other critical mission fields, such as health care and the U.S. military, is robust. However, intelligence scholars publishing within the unclassified arena have been silent on the phenomenon, how personnel respond to it, and how it may impact the intelligence function. This lack of scholarship has afforded an opportunity to understand what constitutes toxic behavior in the intelligence environment and how it may affect U.S. national security …

Womanists Leading White People In Intergroup Dialogue To End Anti-Black Racism: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, Tawana Angela Davis

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Womanism is a term curated by Alice Walker (2004) that centers Black women’s lived experiences, past and present, encouraging Black women to no longer look to others for their liberation (Floyd-Thomas, 2006). Soul 2 Soul Sister’s Facing Racism program is facilitated by Womanist instructors, who work with groups of mostly white people to address anti-Black racism. This qualitative study explored the experiences of white participants who took part in this program, Facing Racism, which holds Womanism as its central guiding principle. Although pre- and post-surveys were routinely conducted over the years about participants’ experiences with Facing Racism, this study sought …

Ibram X. Kendi's How To Be An Antiracist, Quatez Scott

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

This book review of Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist (2019) addresses the importance of exploring race relations in the U.S. from a framework that focuses on racial policies. Commonly referred to as “systemic racism” and “institutional racism”, racist policies maintain racial inequities. Antiracists aim to eliminate those racial policies. Kendi’s ability to address these issues head on with deeply researched historical narratives brings light to the ways racial policies are reinforced, which reproduce racist ideas. This book drives straight to the heart of racial challenges and takes a new approach at examining how and why humans should …

Heavy Is The Head That Wears The Crown: Black Men’S Perspective On Harmful Effects Of Hair Product Use And Breast Cancer Risk, Dede K. Teteh, Marissa Chan, Bing Turner, Brian Hedgeman, Marissa Ericson, Phyllis Clark, Eudora Mitchell, Emily Barrett, Adana Llanos, Rick Kittles, Susanne Montgomery

Health Sciences and Kinesiology Faculty Articles

Racial disparities in breast cancer are well-documented, and Black women assume a disproportionate burden of breast cancer mortality. Black women also commonly use hair products containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) more often at an increased rate, as compared to other racial/ethnic groups. Emerging findings have reported the use of hair and other personal care products containing EDCs may contribute to breast cancer risk. While some sociocultural perspectives about hair and identity have been explored, the role of beauty expectations upheld by males has not been studied. Through a community-based participatory methodology, we explored perceptions and beliefs held by Black men …

Genetic Ancestry, Skin Color And Social Attainment: The Four Cities Study, Dede K. Teteh, Lenna Dawkins-Moultin, Stanley Hooker, Wenndy Hernandez, Carolina Bonilla, Dorothy Galloway, Victor Lagroon, Eunice Rebecca Santos, Mark Shriver, Charmaine D. M. Royal, Rick Kittles

Health Sciences and Kinesiology Faculty Articles

Introduction
The Black population in the US is heterogeneous but is often treated as monolithic in research, with skin pigmentation being the primary indicator of racial classification. Objective: This paper examines the differences among Blacks by comparing genetic ancestry, skin color and social attainment of 259 residents across four US cities—Norman, Oklahoma; Cincinnati, Ohio; Harlem, New York; and Washington, District of Columbia.

Methods
Participants were recruited between 2004 and 2006 at community-based forums. Cross-sectional data were analyzed using chi-square tests, correlation analyses and logistic regression.

Results
There were variations in ancestry, melanin index and social attainment across some cities. Overall, …

“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, …

Reclaiming Images Of Black Women: An Investigation Of Black Womanhood In Visual Communication, Taylor Simone Thomas

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This thesis investigates how Black womanhood has been visually represented in hopes to either recognize Black women as full, nuanced, and legitimate participants of society or to reinforce monolithic representations built from the constructs of social, political, and economic oppression. It also gives an analysis of Black feminism and how Black feminist thought can be applied to the creative process in hopes of challenging visual misrepresentations of Black womanhood. The aim of this thesis is to show that artists and visual communicators do have a responsibility to be conscious of the messages conveyed in their work. In addition, they must …

Fomo, Liquid Courage, And The Intoxicated Self, Lindsay Pressman

Senior Theses and Projects

“Binge-drinking” cannot simply be recognized as a feature of campus culture, but as the product of a profoundly alienating one, made strikingly evident by our creation of a separate world (“drunk world”). We have created a small world of impossible possibles that exists in the corners of the actual; a separate world, in which the imagining of the self, other, and the world, is not only permissible but promoted. At the heart of college students’ “partying hard” is a longing, hope, and dogged determination that the liberating and unifying aspects of this world can overwhelm the actual...and in the meantime …

In Pictures And Words: A Womanist Answer To Addressing The Lived Experience Of African American Women And Their Bodies—A Gumbo Of Liberation And Healing, Yolandé Aileen Ifalami Devoe

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Whether it is claiming a radical self-love for one’s body or dissatisfaction of one’s body, the experiences of African American women and their bodies cannot be divergent from the sociocultural contexts in which they live. Seeking to reveal how gender, race, and sexual orientation impact the lived experiences of African American women and their bodies, this study will bring attention to and provide a more nuanced understanding of the historical and sociocultural ramifications of the Black female body. Historically, inadequate attention has been given to an intersectional approach to understanding the experiences of the Black female body. It is understood …

The Black Identity, Hair Product Use, And Breast Cancer Scale, Dede Teteh, Marissa Ericson, Sabine Monice, Lenna Dawkins-Moultin, Nasim Bahadorani, Phyllis Clark, Eudora Mitchell, Lindsey S. Treviño, Adana Llanos, Rick Kittles, Susanne Montgomery

Health Sciences and Kinesiology Faculty Articles

Introduction
Across the African Diaspora, hair is synonymous with identity. As such, Black women use a variety of hair products, which often contain more endocrine-disrupting chemicals than products used by women of other races. An emerging body of research is linking chemicals in hair products to breast cancer, but there is no validated instrument that measures constructs related to hair, identity, and breast health. The objective of this study was to develop and validate the Black Identity, Hair Product Use, and Breast Cancer Scale (BHBS) in a diverse sample of Black women to measure the social and cultural constructs associated …

Affect And Manhattan’S West Side Piers, Ricardo J. Millhouse

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Derek P. McCormack (2010) argues, "Affect, is like an atmosphere: it might not be visible, but at any given point it might be sensed ... Emotion, in turn, can be understood as the sociocultural expression of this felt intensity" (643). This paper puts McCormack (2010) and Ben Anderson (2009) into conversation to think through the ways in which atmosphere in relation to affective and emotive life has been conceptualized. I center the affective atmospheres that happen with queer bodies that make New York's west side piers queerly affective. I use "queer bodies" to signal the dis-identification with heteronormativity or binaristic …

Ua12/2/2 2019 Talisman: Balance, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

2019 Talisman yearbook.

• Mohr, Olivia. Balance
• Lunte, Hailee. That Warm Feeling Autumn Took from Me
• Dozer, Claire. Mother Load – Savannah Ranney
• Hubbs, Annalee. Tap After Hours – Dance
• Lancaster, Emily. Opposites Attract – Maddie Rediker & Cameron Blankenship
• Jones, Sydney. Delving into the Dirty – Taylor Gossage, Lion’s Den
• Chu, Phi. Snow Song
• Gordon, Zora. Spells & Spirit – Kristen Dalby, Witchcraft
• Powers, Noah. What is Left – Kelly Meredith, Identity Theft
• Aklilu, Bethel. Uprooting – International Students
• Steffey, Raegan. The Dirty Art Kids
• Dieudonne, Nadia. Self Starteres – Entrepreneurs
• Bass, Morgan. Young & Partisan – Politics
• Powers, Noah. …

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …