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Full-Text Articles in African American Studies

Regardless, ‘I’ And ‘You’: Lessons From Black Feminist Literature, Jasmine Veronica Sauceda Jan 2022

Regardless, ‘I’ And ‘You’: Lessons From Black Feminist Literature, Jasmine Veronica Sauceda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple from a Black feminist perspective to demonstrate oneness as capacious being. This project explores an I-You dialogue that works toward future-making through the notion of regardless, an idea from Walker’s definition of Womanist, deployed through sustained engagement with Kevin Quashie’s notion of oneness. Thus, this work extrapolates lessons found in the selected texts to demonstrate what it means to embody a capaciousness of being and how this then fosters healing in the face of trauma. In so doing, …


Adding A Dimension: Illustrating Triple Consciousness Theory In The African American Literary Tradition, Asia Wesley Jan 2021

Adding A Dimension: Illustrating Triple Consciousness Theory In The African American Literary Tradition, Asia Wesley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the way gender expands and nuances W.E.B. DuBois’s double consciousness theory, which depicts the African American identity as a doubleness that is both American and Negro. Black feminist criticism’s nuanced formulation of DuBois’s formulation of Black identity allows the African American literary tradition to be seen through three lenses: an American, a Negro, and an African American’s gender identity. In order to further contemporize the pre-existing Black feminist criticism, I examine Hurston, Brooks, and Morrison in the three time periods that followed DuBois’s coining of double consciousness theory: (1) the Harlem Renaissance, (2) the Civil Rights Movement …


There Is Water In The World For Us : The Environmental Theories Of Alice Walker., Janae Lewis Hall May 2018

There Is Water In The World For Us : The Environmental Theories Of Alice Walker., Janae Lewis Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of African-American Environmental thought responds to the ongoing erasure of Black experiences and their perspectives on nature. Mainstream environmentalism maintains a legacy of perceived innocence and incorruptibility towards the land, while Black Environmentalism demonstrates the limitations of that ideology. Limitations include the erasure of history in regards to stealing land from Indigenous people, the brutality of slavery, legalized lynching, forced removal from the land, exploitation in sharecropping, destruction of sacred lands, heavy pollution in urban centers, and harmful environmental policies. For Black and Indigenous peoples, it is impossible to view American soil as innocent. This project surveyed the …


The Texts We Play: Avatar Creation And Racial Invisibility In Role-Playing Video Games, Daniel L. Archer May 2016

The Texts We Play: Avatar Creation And Racial Invisibility In Role-Playing Video Games, Daniel L. Archer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project sets out to address problems of racial inequalities in role-playing video games as part of a growing field of video game studies in literary criticism. As these games are an increasingly popular form of entertainment in contemporary culture, their potential effects on players cannot be ignored. If these games continue to reflect society in a way that perpetuates racist stereotypes, social progress will halt. In order to study these games from a literary perspective, then, this project combines both narratological and ludological approaches to video game studies in order to bring about new insight from two strong perspectives. …


Flinging The Apron And Tearing The Kerchief: Janie Crawford's Gestures In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Madeline Elizabeth Celley Jan 2016

Flinging The Apron And Tearing The Kerchief: Janie Crawford's Gestures In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Madeline Elizabeth Celley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I argue that in her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston demonstrates protagonist Janie Crawford's development through her use of gesture. As the narrative moves throughout Janie's life, she becomes progressively able to communicate her feelings and desires through the use of her body's movements. By depicting Janie's subjectivity as fundamentally embodied, Hurston indicates an awareness of the cultural oppression Janie suffers, linking her body to those of women in the past that suffered as slaves. She draws attention to Janie's body by relying on her gestures in order to emphasize the …