African American Studies Commons^™

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) …

The Murder Of George Floyd: A Case Study Examining How The Policing Of Black Men And Grassroots Activism Influence The Will Of Black Women To Lead, Ella Gates-Mahmoud

Doctorate in Education

This study's objective investigates the viewpoints held by Black women in two urban areas of Minnesota about the social upheaval that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 for using a counterfeit $20 bill. In the last decade, police killings of innocent Black people in the United States have received more attention, and Floyd's death is only one example of this phenomenon. In the U.S., the likelihood of a police officer taking the life of a Black man is higher than that of a White man. Between 2013-2019 there have been 1,641 fatal shootings of defenseless Black men by …

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 …

Epistemic Injustice, Endometriosis And Dance/ Movement Therapy: An Autoethnographic Investigation, Kevana West

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

As the field of dance/ movement therapy evolves to meet the demands of a rapidly changing social landscape, it is imperative that clinicians think critically about the degree to which our work is steeped in oppressive frameworks and ideologies. This investigation uses testimony to explore epistemic injustice as it relates to the author’s experience of living with endometriosis and the pursuit of professional licensure. Considering the limited amount of research on the condition, along with the perceived absence of literature within the field of dance/ movement therapy, further study is warranted. The experimentation phase of this research incorporated the use …

Wilderness Is Not A Safe Space: How Nature Has Been Used As A Form Of Oppression Towards Black People Throughout American History, Dorothy Irrera

English Honors Theses

This Capstone won Skidmore's Racial Justice Student Award. An analysis of literature, American history, and pop culture, Wilderness Is Not a Safe Space: How Nature Has Been Used as a Form of Oppression Towards Black People Throughout American History uses a sociological lens to approach the inherent relationship between racism and wilderness.

Black Teachers’ Collective Wisdom As Social Justice Pedagogy: A Black Feminist Narrative Analysis, Jacqueline Cora Boone

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

In this age, 21st century, where social issues surrounding race and gender are impassioned and escalating, black feminists and Black Feminist Theory are leading the charge in bringing salience through activism and engagement. Doing post structural qualitative research aims to dismantle a myth of scientific knowledge that emphasizes triangulation and transferability of research with the use of multiple representations of experience. This research investigates critical issues in qualitative research, specifically the ontological challenge that researchers commonly encountered in depicting experience and social reality. The turn to experience and lived stories has expanded the modes of qualitative research by hearing marginalized …

Trajectory Of Trauma: The Experiences Of Black Girls In The School-To-Prison Pipeline, Heather Nicholson-Bester

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This critical ethnographic research utilizes participatory action research (PAR) and case studies to explore the impacts that zero-tolerance policies have had on the lives of Black girls and women. This work contributes to a small but growing body of work on the intersectional struggles faced by Black girls within the School-to-Prison Pipeline. An aim of this research was to work with the participants to amplify their voices and center them as experts on their own lives. Working with a small sample of three girls and women enabled the creation of detailed narratives of their experiences. These narratives point to the …

Insurgent Knowledge: The Poetics And Pedagogy Of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, And Adrienne Rich In The Era Of Open Admissions, Danica B. Savonick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Insurgent Knowledge analyzes the reciprocal relations between teaching and literature in the work of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, and Adrienne Rich, all of whom taught in the Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) educational opportunity program at the City University of New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on archival research and analysis of their published work, I show how feminist aesthetics have shaped U.S. education (especially student-centered pedagogical practices) and how classroom encounters with students had a lasting impact on our postwar literary landscape and theories of difference. My project demonstrates how, …

Race, Resilience, And Resistance: A Culturally Relevant Examination Of How Black Women School Leaders Advance Racial Equity And Social Justice In U.S. Schools, Tonya Evette Walls

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This culturally relevant qualitative examination of the leadership of Black women educational leaders (BWEL) committed to advancing a social justice leadership agenda within the contested spaces (Stovall, 2004) comprising United States (U.S.) P-12 schools, employs an African centered emancipatory methodology (Kershaw, 1990, 1992; Tillman, 2002), situated in a conceptual framework grounded in the research on applied critical leadership (Santamaria, 2013). It examines, highlights, celebrates, and makes transparent, the unique leadership of BWEL. Engaged to rebuke the silencing and marginalization of women educational leaders of color in the educational leadership discourse, this study bridges engages a multiple case study approach, phenomenological …

Resisting Criminalization Through Moses House: An Engaged Ethnography, Lance Arney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Neoliberal restructuring of the state has had destructive effects on families and children living in urban poverty, compelling them to adapt to the loss of social welfare and demolition of the public sphere by submitting to new forms of surveillance and disciplining of their individual behavior. A carceral-welfare state apparatus now confines and controls the bodies of expendable laborers in urban spaces, containing their threat to the neoliberal socioeconomic order through criminalization and workfare assistance, resulting in a new symbiosis of prison and ghetto. The resulting structures of punishment, police surveillance, and criminalization primarily surround African Americans living in high …

Disrupting The Deficit Discourse On Historically Black Colleges And Universities: An Organizational Identity Case Study Of Philander Smith College, Shametrice Ledora Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The federal Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, defines a historically Black institution of higher education as "any historically Black college or university that was established prior to 1964, whose principle mission was, and is, the education of Black Americans." Today, there are approximately 105 HBCUs, more than half private, the rest public, and a few two-year institutions (Allen, Jewell, Griffin, & Wolf, 2007). While currently only 14 percent of Black college students attend HBCUs, 70 percent of all Black doctors and dentists, 50 percent of all Black engineers and public school teachers, and 35 percent of all Black …