African American Studies Commons^™

“Dialogical Offense:” A Postcolonial Womanist Deconstruction Of The Colonial Experience Of African American Women Through U.S. Institutional Apparatus Known As Criminal Justice Policy, April Michelle Woodson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Black female experience in the United States is a colonized existence. This project’s analysis is specific to the North American U.S. geographic space and is not a diasporic project. Black women suffered from the greatest increase in the percentage of inmates incarcerated for drug offenses in the 1980’s and 1990’s which is the period of criminal justice policy formation and implementation on which this project is focused.

This project is uniquely situated in the overlap between womanist ethics and postcolonial feminist imagination and extends scholarship in both discourses by showing that there is an interwoven line between the colonial-to-contemporary …

Black, Queer, And Blessed: Toward A Biblically Based Black, Queer Narrative Of Leadership, Arthur Leon Tredwell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the evolution of traditional African-American religious leadership as it evolved during the first half of the twentieth century. It traces the two primary models of Black religious leadership that emerged from White, cis, benevolent and dominating models of patriarchy. This task is accomplished primarily through a survey of the ministries of Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Jr. (1908-1970) and their consecutive sixty years of ministry at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, Harlem, New York. It intentionally engages the issue of homophobia, demonstrating how it operates in Black churches generationally.

Determining these historical patriarchal models of leadership to …

Why Does The Caged Bird Sing? A Phenomenological Analysis Of The African American Clergywoman And Her Plight In Black Churches: An Ethical Dilemma, Andriette Dionne Jordan-Fields

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative analysis with a phenomenological approach seeks to address the fact that the Black Churches fail many of its members, specifically the female segment, which encompasses at least eighty-five to ninety percent of the churches population. Despite the historical evidence of how the Black Church championed causes/issues of discrimination, while being considered the bastion of liberation, African American females historically have been disregarded, disrespected and denied leadership opportunities, by the patriarchal leadership. This deleterious, ecclesial episteme (the churches system of understanding) and the ideology of African American male clergy, toward clergywomen, have developed strategies of containment, designed consciously and …

The African-American Islamic Renaissance And The Rise Of The Nation Of Islam, Patrick Denis Bowen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines African-American Islamic culture from 1920 through 1959, a period I label the "African-American Islamic Renaissance" (AAIR). The AAIR is characterized by a significant increase in interest in Islam, extreme diversity in views about Islam, and the absence of a single organization dominating African-American Islamic culture for a significant amount of time. Previous works dealing with African-American Islam in this period have failed to fully recognize these features, particularly the last of these. As a result, explanations for the rise of the Nation of Islam (NOI) have not satisfactorily explained why it was only the NOI--and not other …