African American Studies Commons^™

Exploring Psychological Territoriality Through The Domestic Gothic In Beloved And Mama Day, Lori L. Cook

English Department Theses

The novels, Beloved, by Toni Morrison, and Mama Day, by Gloria Naylor, contain narratives of families with a history of slavery that explore how their female protagonists claim their identities within the new boundaries of freedom. Using a framework of the Domestic Gothic, this paper explores how formerly enslaved female characters claim new psychological territory in bounded domestic spaces by using the chores they were forced to perform during their times of slavery as a means to independence. Domestic duties such as cooking and gardening along with magical and religious ceremonies and acts of violence are passed down through the …

Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Zora Neale Hurston, And The Creation Of "Authentic Voices" In The Black Women's Literary Tradition, Anna Storm

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on African American women’s literature from the 1890s through 1948, covering the New Negro movement and sentimental domestic novel, the folk writings of the early twentieth century, and white-life fiction. The study investigates writers and texts that at various points in the creation of a black women’s literary tradition have been labeled “inauthentic” or have otherwise received comparably little attention by scholars of the tradition. In particular, I examine the work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson and Zora Neale Hurston, placing them in conversation with one another and within the broader context of black women’s writing at the turn …

Defying Convention: Atypical Perspectives Of Slavery In Antebellum New Orleans, Amanda N. Carr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the first half of the nineteenth century, slavery became a vital economic component upon which the success of the southern states in America rested. Cotton was king, and slavery was the peculiar institution that ensured its dominance in the domestic and international markets of America. Popular portrayals, however, often neglect the complicated dynamics of American slavery and instead depict the institution in simplistic terms. The traditional view has emphasized an image of white southerners as slaveholders and blacks as slaves. In New Orleans, the lives of three men—all of whom were tied to slavery in varying capacities—reveal a much …

Reconciling The Past In Octavia Butler's Kindred, Haley V. Manis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses the observations of Nancy J. Peterson on historical wounds as a springboard to discuss Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred and its use of both white and black characters to reexamine the origins of the historical wounds and why they are so difficult to deal with even today. Other scholarly works will be used to further investigate the importance of each character in the story and what they mean to the wound itself. Specifically, Dana is analyzed alongside the other main characters: Rufus, Alice, and Kevin. Though Dana’s relationships with these characters, Kindred’s version of the past can be …

A Performance Analysis Of Dorothy Rudd Moore's Sonnets On Love, Rosebuds, And Death, Cordelia Elizabeth Anderson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this document is to evaluate Dorothy Rudd Moore’s Sonnets on Love, Rosebuds, and Death through a performance analysis, and to discuss the significance of the Harlem Renaissance in relation to the song cycle. Moore used seven reputable poets from the Harlem Renaissance to compile this song cycle. The poets are Alice Dunbar Nelson, Clarissa Scott Delany, Gwendolyn Bennett, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Countee Cullen, and Helene Johnson. A few of them were a part of the core group that spurred this powerful movement. The Harlem Renaissance was a flourishing time in American history when African Americans felt …

Image, Narrative, & Concept Of Time In Valerie Capers's Song Cycle Song Of The Seasons, Lillian Channelle Roberts

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Once I was a classical pianist, then I was a jazz pianist, but now I’m a pianist – No label. And in my writing, I’m not concerned with any particular style. I’ve found that if you have musical groundwork and some idea of the emotional impact the music should have, the musical style will hang together.

—Valerie Capers

Primarily known as a renowned jazz pianist, Valerie Capers is a blind, African-American woman composer who defied all odds by becoming the first blind graduate of The Juilliard School. Dr. Capers also became valedictorian of the New York Institute for the Education …

Abdurraqib, Samaa, Iris Sangiovanni, Samar Ahmed

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Samaa Abdurraqib is a Black, queer, Muslim woman living in Portland, Maine. Abdurraqib was raised in Columbus, Ohio. She attend the University of Ohio, and later the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received a PhD in English Literature. After graduating she worked as a visiting professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Next she went on to work the American Civil Liberties Union in Maine as a reproductive rights organizer. She now works for the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. Her advocacy and organizing work has included places such as Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine, …

"Daring Propaganda For The Beauty Of The Human Mind:" Critical Consciousness-Raising In The Poetry And Drama Of The Black Power Era, 1965-1976, Markeysha D. Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a literary and intellectual history of the contributions of black American theorists, poets, and dramatists in the 1960s and 1970s towards the establishment of black critical consciousness in order to lay grounds for black people to experience a fuller existence as human beings through black-centered creations and presentations. Through the following chapters, I establish the framework and evolution of black psyche-liberation theories—spanning Du Bois’s theory of double-conscious through the contributions of black artist-theorists like Baraka, Neal, and Woodie King, Jr., followed by examinations at length of the theories of black liberation in praxis by the poets and …

From Recovery To Discovery: Ethnic American Science Fiction And (Re)Creating The Future, Daoine S. Bachran

English Language and Literature ETDs

My project assesses how science fiction by writers of color challenges the scientific racism embedded in genetics, nuclear development, digital technology, and molecular biology, demonstrating how these fields are deployed disproportionately against people of color. By contextualizing current scientific development with its often overlooked history and exposing the full life cycle of scientific practices and technological changes, ethnic science fiction authors challenge science’s purported objectivity and make room for alternative scientific methods steeped in Indigenous epistemologies. The first chapter argues that genetics is deployed disproportionally against black Americans, from the pseudo-scientific racial classifications of the nineteenth century and earlier through …

Negotiating The Delta: Dr. T.R.M. Howard In Mound Bayou, Mississippi, William Jackson Southerland

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the racially segregationist practices and the integrationist, inclusionist formation of African American leader Dr. T.R.M. Howard during his tenure as a surgeon and entrepreneur in the all-black Mississippi Delta community of Mound Bayou, 1942-1956. The paper analytically investigates the careful racial negotiations that were required of Howard as he advanced a separatist but egalitarian economic and social plan for Delta blacks. This separatist plan, it is argued, is grounded in the racial pragmatism of the Seventh-day Adventist church which provided a bibliocentric, Tuskegee-inspired education to Howard from youth through medical school and beyond. Howard’s adherence to Adventist …

The Strains Of Confessional Poetry: The Burdens, Blunders, And Blights Of Self-Disclosure, Lara Rossana Rodriguez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

When a provocative style of autobiographical verse had emerged in postwar America, literary critics christened the new genre “confessional poetry.” Confessional poets of the 1960s and ’70s are often characterized by scholars of contemporary poetry as a cohort of writers who, unlike previous generations before them, dared to explore in their work the personal and inherited traumas of mental illness, family suicides, failed marriages, and crushing addictions. As a result, the body of work these writers produced is often experienced as a collection of stylized, literary self-portraits. What can these self-portraits reveal to us about the connection between confessional poetry …

Engagement And Resistance: African Americans, Saudi Arabia And Islamic Transnationalisms, 1975 To 2000, Jeffrey Diamant

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the 1960s, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has financed missionary efforts to Muslims around the world, attempting to spread a Salafi form of Islam that professes strict adherence to Islamic sacred scripture. The effects of this transnational proselytization have depended on numerous factors in “host countries.” This project explores the various impacts of Saudi transnational religious influence in the United States among African-Americans. By relying on previously unused documentary sources and fresh oral histories, it shows how Saudi “soft power” attempted to effect change in religious practices of African-American Muslims from 1975 through 2000. It provides the most detailed …

What I’M Reading: Harper Lee’S 2 Novels, Jerome A. Gilbert

President's Research and Writings

Last fall, shortly after it was published, I read Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, and this summer I reread her classic To Kill a Mockingbird. The controversy around Watchman intrigued me. I saw the differences in the books mainly as the change between the perspectives of the young Scout and the adult Scout (aka Jean Louise). Unlike some, I saw the Watchman as an honest book reflecting the complicated reality of white America in the Jim Crow era.

Chronology And Itinerary Of The Career Of J. Tim Brymn Materials For A Biography, Peter M. Lefferts

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

James Timothy Brymn (1873-1945), a composer, conductor, and arranger, was one of the cohort of top African American dance band and theatre orchestra leaders active in Chicago and New York who became Army bandleaders in WWI. In the first decade of the 20th century, he was acknowledged as a pre-eminent master of ragtime and one of the premiere song writers of America. Brymn was the author of one of the first published blues (1912), the author of some of the first published tangos (in 1913 and 1914), the author of one of the first published jazz numbers (1917), and the …

Decolonizing The Ya North: Environmental Injustice In Sherri L. Smith’S Orleans, Micah-Jade M. Coleman

Master's Theses

Young Adult (YA) dystopias, in recent years, have imagined a future world fueled by the overuse and misuse of technology, the advancement of science for human gain, as well as societies ruled by governments that govern based on their own self-interests and economic gain. Such novels have opened the door for discussion about how the present-day actions of societies can impact the future of the environment; yet many only focus their attention on societies in the North— regions considered “developed” by the western world. In her YA novel, Orleans (2014), Sherri L. Smith focuses attention on the aftermath of Hurricane …

Booker T. Washington And W.E.B. Du Bois: Guiding Students To Historical Context, Adam Kotlarczyk

Adam Kotlarczyk

Seldom have two vastly different visions been expressed as clearly and as elegantly as in Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Exposition Address (1895) and W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” (from The Souls of Black Folk, 1903). Awash in memorable rhetoric, these competing philosophies foresaw very different paths for America, and for black social progress, at the dawn of the twentieth century. This lesson introduces students to the ideas and informational texts of Washington and DuBois while challenging students to research some of the historical context in which these men lived, worked, and thought.

Booker T. Washington And W.E.B. Du Bois: Guiding Students To Historical Context, Adam Kotlarczyk

Adam Kotlarczyk

Seldom have two vastly different visions been expressed as clearly and as elegantly as in Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Exposition Address (1895) and W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” (from The Souls of Black Folk, 1903). Awash in memorable rhetoric, these competing philosophies foresaw very different paths for America, and for black social progress, at the dawn of the twentieth century. This lesson introduces students to the ideas and informational texts of Washington and DuBois while challenging students to research some of the historical context in which these men lived, worked, and thought.

Book Review - Jim Crow, Literature, And The Legacy Of Sutton E. Griggs, Michael K. Law

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

What The Tides May Bring: Political "Tigueraje" Disposession And Popular Dissent In Samaná, Dominican Republic, Ryan A. Mann-Hamilton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation is a historical and ethnographic project that delves into the conflictive relationship between the development of the Dominican state and the formation of the community of the port city of Samaná. The African diasporic community of Samaná has actively constructed the local space throughout shifting political projects, while sustaining their collective voices against the waves of dispossession crashing on their shores. Using a combination of archival research, participant observation, oral history and ethnography, I document multiple instances of state intervention to understand how the Samaná community has been coerced over time to consent to these processes. I juxtapose …

Descent: American Individualism, American Blackness And The Trouble With Invention, Simone White

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Descent is metacritical, ranging across disciplines to take up – as flash points or instances – failed attempts to revolutionize knowledge, considering these as descents, or movements into the deep, that remain stiff or un-poetic in their attitudes toward the American truisms “individualism,” “blackness” and “invention.” Beginning with William Carlos Williams’ formulation of descent (as a practice necessary for establishing national literary identity) in In the American Grain, the project resolves around the question, How can the critic make peace with her desire to dominate the object of critique by proposing its perpetual sameness in relation to the critic? …

A Critical Study Of The African-American Comedic Tradition, Allison Longo

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the changes in African-American comedy during the 1980s. In exploring the changes during this decade, specific attention is paid to Eddie Murphy, who achieved incredible success beginning with his 1980 entrance on Saturday Night Live. In a relatively short period of time, Murphy was able to ascend to a level of cultural significance that far dwarfed that reached by any of the African American comedians who had preceded him. Through a comprehensive presentation of the historical development of African American humor, the following thesis challenges the consensus critical assumption that Murphy both consciously forewent opportunities to be …

A Dark Record: Criminal Discourse And The African American Literary Project, 1721-1864, Brian Baaki

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A Dark Record charts the emergence and traces the evolution of a central figure in American culture, the myth of the black criminal. It does so both to explore the ideological effects of print, and to present an alternative history of African American literature. Historians have long maintained that the association of African Americans with crime solidified in our national culture during the post-Reconstruction period, the nadir for African American civil rights, with a corresponding rise in the over-policing of black individuals and communities. For its part, my study looks back from the post-Reconstruction period, and examines the role earlier …

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?: Food Inequlaity And Black Americans, Christina Foster

Capstone Collection

Food insecurity is an issue that plagues many people throughout the world. It only requires a brief search on the United Nation’s (U.N.) World Hunger Map to determine that this is indeed a worldwide crisis. Conversely, within the United States, the issue of hunger is often treated as “minimal” in comparison to other countries. A deeper inquiry into hunger within the U.S. reveals an even more disturbing connection: the role of white supremacy and systemic racism in regard to hunger. Academic research pertaining to food access is quite recent. Be that as it may, it is of no surprise that …

Black Lives Matter: Why Black Feminism?, Analexicis T. Bridewell

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

In this essay, the author explores the inclusive nature and focal range of the Black Lives Matter movement in an effort to demonstrate how the goals of the movement are grounded in Black feminism. Ultimately, Bridewell concludes that creating inclusive spaces for the exploration of intersectional identities can help bring justice and equality not only to the Black community, but to all lives that have be oppressed or marginalized.

The Turning Point Of Who Shall Be Master: Killer Of Sheep, Naming, Gender, And The Gaze Of African American Women, Sean Davis Watkins

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Charles Burnett’s 1978 award-winning film Killer of Sheep directly responded to the then-popular Blaxploitation genre, holding a mirror up to post-Watts, 1970s America, while exposing and exploring gender and race issues. Moreover, intentionally or not, Burnett, with this film, effectively demonstrated the lack of recognition that Black women faced in domestic, activist, and employment spheres; simultaneously, Burnett conspicuously reified the relegation of women into that silent, domestic sphere while challenging stereotypes of Black men, elevating them and establishing them as humans, capable of hubris, humanity, and vulnerability. This neo-realistic film masterfully rebirthed the African American male identity; unfortunately, though, neglected …

The Political Illegitimacy Of "Superstition:" Obeah After The Morant Bay Rebellion, 1865-1900, Rachael Mackenzie Maclean

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Accessibility Of The American Dream To Racial Minorities In America, Kimberly Wong

English Class Publications

For centuries, people have had the American Dream. It has permeated the media in various forms: Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby,” and even the movie “An American Tail,” where animated Russian mice sing, “There are no cats in America and the streets are full of cheese!” The term “the American Dream” was first made popular in 1931 by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America. Adams believed the American Dream was a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller …

An Unchained Analysis Of Racial Tension In America, Moriah Angott

Honors Projects

Modern race issues stem not only from the past but also from a lack of understanding and empathy for each other. How we talk about race will not only inform how we are able to move forward as a society, but it will also say a great deal about how we are evolving as human beings. It is important, and has been recognized as such, that black Americans have the freedom to grapple with that past, to understand it, and to feel connected to those ancestors who suffered in order for the foundation of this country to be built. Is …

"I Began To Realize That I Had Some Friends:" Hardship, Resistance, Cooperation, And Unity In Hartford's African American Community, 1833-1841, Evan Turiano

Senior Theses and Projects

This thesis explores Hartford's black community between 1833 and 1841, looking at the exclusion they faced and the ways in which they resisted against it, focusing on four key moments to tell this story. It seeks to use this setting as a platform to make a case for the importance, and uniqueness, of the contributions of antebellum Northern black communities to the rise of antislavery.

Transnationalizing Social Justice Education: Interamerican Frameworks For Teaching And Learning In The 21st Century, Mirangela G. Buggs

Doctoral Dissertations

Social Justice Education currently uses mostly U.S.-based theories and concepts, and it often relies upon nation-specific historical legacies and nation-centric contemporary understandings of patterns of inequality. This study offers interdisciplinary conceptual-historical frameworks garnered from historical studies, African Diaspora Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, along with studies of frameworks and pedagogies in critical and multicultural education to enlarge Social Justice Education. This conceptual study utilizes a world-historical analysis and focuses on the interconnectedness of the Americas—Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America— establishing a hemispheric and regional framework to inspire more transnational work in educational projects. Arguing that there are shared …