African American Studies Commons^™

Perhaps A Black Girl Rolls Her Eyes Because It's One Way She Attempts To Shift Calcified Pain Throughout Her Body, Fahima Ife

Occasional Paper Series

This essay describes a unique undergraduate survey of African American literature—titled "Black Girl Magic Across Time & Space"—designed to celebrate rather than punish expressive Black girlhood and womanhood.

Hair Is The Root Of A Revolution: How Black Women Are Embracing Their Identity With Hair, Shanel Dawson

Capstones

For years, black women have been demeaned for their features; their noses, complexions and hair. Straight hair and wavy hair have been considered “good hair.” And for centuries these ideas have been perpetuated by images in the media, cultural messages and even policies in schools and professional settings.

Today black women, nationwide, are rejecting straightening chemicals and embracing their natural hair as a point of pride. I spoke with several black women who are attempting to distance themselves from these negative narratives by honoring their roots.

For black women in America, hair has been the easiest way to connect on …

Southern Veils : The Sisters Of Loretto In Early National Kentucky., Hannah O'Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the experiences of Roman Catholic women who joined the Sisters of Loretto, a community of women religious in rural Washington and Nelson Counties, Kentucky, between the 1790s and 1826. It argues that the Sisters of Loretto used faith to interpret and respond to unfolding events in the early nation. The women sought to combat moral slippage and restore providential favor in the face of local Catholic institutional instability, global Protestant evangelical movements, war and economic crisis, and a tuberculosis outbreak. The Lorettines faced financial, social, and cultural pressures—including an economic depression, a culture that celebrated family formation …

Pink Is The New Bull: The Feminization Of Pit Bulls In Visual And Literary Discourses As A Rescue Tactic, Stephanie Hogue

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Since the 1980s, pit bulls have been portrayed in a raced, classed, and gendered national discourse that has associated them with minority males of color in low-income urban areas. This discourse has led to a villianization of the breed that has resulted in restrictions on pit bulls and their owners. This project seeks to explore the raced, classed, and gendered representations of pit bulls in cultural productions and the nuanced ways in which the intersectional identities ascribed to pit bulls have impacted their status as acceptable pets in the United States.

I aim to demonstrate that through visual and literary …

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 …

Tragic Mulatta 2.0: A Postcolonial Approximation And Critique Of The Representations Of Bi-Ethnic Women In U.S. Film And Tv, Hadia Nouria Bendelhoum

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This study analyzes the representations of five bi-ethnic women characters in U.S. mass media both before and after U.S. “post-racial” era, to find and expose evidence of the continuity and perpetuation of racist stereotypes against biracial/bi-ethnic women. I utilize a thematic textual analysis, supported by the theories, ideas, and critical views of postcolonial theorists Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, and Edward Said, and composed of three prominent themes which expose the nature of the representations of lead bi-ethnic characters in current mass media entertainment (TV programs and films). The themes further explored through this project are: bi-ethnicity (one Black parent and …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 93, No. 26 [27], Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news. This issue contains articles:

• Alvey, Rebekah. Finding His Way – Timothy Caboni
• Coyle, Cameron. WKU Police Department Builds Trust with More Diverse Force
• Ziege, Nicole. Student Government Association Discusses Strategic Planning, Passes Two Bills
• Lee, David. College Heights Herald Reserve Fund
• King, Jennifer. Editorial Cartoon re: Responsibility
• Ho Ho Herald – Christmas Gifts
• Leonard, Nicole. Gender Disparities Impact Health Care Policy
• Semester Recap
• Fletcher, Griffin. Mr. Devastating: Male Pageant Aims to Defy Sexism – Delta Sigma Theta
• Mohr, Olivia. New Restaurant Hickory & Oak to Come to Town
• Moore, …

Writing The Experiences And (Corporeal) Knowledges Of Women Of Color Into Educational Studies: A Colloquium, A. B. V. M. M. Armstrong-Carela-Martínez-Pérez-Ruiz Guerrero

Pedagogy & (Im)Possibilities across Education Research (PIPER)

In this colloquium, we share collaborative ideas that came about during a weekend retreat. We center our discussions on Chicana and Black feminisms and Womanism, specifically addressing how women of color feminisms inspire us; imagining/defining space; tensions within our sisterhoods; transforming (inner)coloniality by embracing our lived herstories; and how Chicana and Black feminisms and Womanism transform educational studies. We leave readers with hopes for our-selves, our fields, our sisters, and for the world. While not exact tellings of our pláticas during our retreat, we capture and share the essence of burning questions, ideas, and hopes that arose for us when …

The Spirit Of Friendship: Girlfriends In Contemporary African American Literature, Tangela La'chelle Serls

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Spirit of Friendship: Girlfriends in Contemporary African American Literature examines spiritual subjectivities that inspire girlfriends in three contemporary novels to journey towards actualization. It examines the girlfriend bond as a space where the Divine Spirit can flourish and assist girlfriends as they seek to become actualized. This project raises epistemological questions as it suggests that within the girlfriend dynamic, knowledge that is traditionally subjugated is formed and refined. Finally, girlfriend epistemology is considered in light of Black Girl Magic, a contemporary social and cultural movement among Black women.

Producing "Fabulous": Commodification And Ethnicity In Hair Braiding Salons, Sylviane Ngandu-Kalenga Greensword

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Black women wearing fabulous braids are a striking feature of the Afro-diasporic cultural landscape. However, the braiders and salon owners who enable this aesthetic engineering are seldom acknowledged. This dissertation investigates the experience and role of Caribbean and West and Central African women in the hair braiding industry, a rapidly growing business in the U.S. I address the complexity of these women’s multiple social roles and the multiple consciousness (King, 1988) associated with their demographic characteristics (color, ethnicity, gender, nationality, and immigrant status). The commonalities between the braiders and their mostly African American customers contrast vividly with their perception of …

We Just Need To Pee: Bathroom Bills And The Intersection Of Human Rights, Gender, And Race, Lena Tenney

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Although rarely publicly discussed, bathrooms are a fundamental element of everyday life. In fact, the majority of the population does not question their right or ability to access public restroom facilities because they are a mundane aspect of daily routine. However, the recent rise of “bathroom bills” in state legislatures has sparked significant media coverage and highlighted activist movements seeking to guarantee safe, affirming, and legally protected access to bathrooms for people of all gender identities and expressions.

This paper will illustrate that bathroom access is not only a matter of public policy, but also a question of human rights. …

Beyond The Boundaries Of Childhood: Northern African American Children's Cultural And Political Resistance, 1780-1861, Crystal L. Webster

Doctoral Dissertations

Notions of childhood as a distinct developmental period of life were concretized during the nineteenth century. Features of children’s lives including innocence, play, and exclusion from labor became markers of ideal childhoods as part of the racialized modernization of childhood. This dissertation uncovers the ways in which modern constructions of childhood attempted to subjugate northern African American children throughout the nineteenth century and highlights the means by which black children and conceptualizations of black childhood became agents and sites of resistance. In doing so, it demonstrates both how African American children experienced age-based forms of subjugation as well as their …

We Are Roses From Our Mothers' Gardens: Black Feminist Visuality In African American Women's Art, Kelli Morgan

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT WE ARE ROSES FROM OUR MOTHERS’ GARDENS: BLACK FEMINIST VISUALITY IN AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN’S ART MAY 2017 KELLI MORGAN, B.A., WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERISTY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Manisha Sinha We Are Roses From Our Mothers' Gardens posits that in differing historical periods African American women visual artists employed various media and create from individual political thoughts, intellectual views, and aesthetic interests to emphasize the innate unification of a Black woman’s race, gender, sexuality, class, and selfhood and how this multifaceted dynamic of Black women’s identity and material reality produces a …

‘Woman Thou Art Loosed’: Black Female Sexuality Unhinged In The Fiction Of Frances Harper And Pauline Hopkins, Crystal Donkor

Doctoral Dissertations

Race-sex narratives that dominated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries permeated the political, scientific, and social fabric of the nation, but did not solely center on black bodies. These narratives demeaned and degraded a race of black citizens, characterizing them as sexually deviant social pariahs. Consequently, these same notions elevated whites to the highest rungs of society, marking them as moral and desirable. This crafting of racial identity acted as just one way to justify racial subordination through the creation of notions that proved detrimental to black life and worthiness. Writer-activists penning their tales of fiction after the Civil War …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 93, No. 19, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news. This issue contains articles:

• Coyle, Cameron. Students Express Concern Over WKU Alert System
• Alvey, Rebekah. Faculty Regent Reflects on Term – Barbara Burch
• Eastham, Lillie. Glow Walk Honors People Affected by Cancer – Relay for Life
• Ziege, Nicole. Student Government Association Fails to Pass Resolution Supporting Dreamers – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
• DeLetter, Emily. Scheduling Software Aims to Simplify Registration
• Huff, Taylor. Do You Support the Fairness Ordinance?
• Austin, Emma. Editorial Cartoon re: Faculty Regent Election
• Part-time Faculty Deserve a Say in Faculty Regent Election
• Hormell, David. The …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 93, No. 18, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news. This issue contains articles:

• Alvey, Rebekah. Faculty Regent Ballot Results Tossed Over Part-time Vote
• Moore, Noah. Stand Proud – Pride Festival
• Stahl, Matt. Event Celebrates Young Women in Science, Technology, Engineering & Math – SkyTeach
• Collins, Emma. Hiring Process Changes to Address Budget Deficit
• Harsh, Spencer. New Tracks to Add to your Playlist
• Smith, Alexis. Editorial Cartoon re: Fairness Ordinance
• Fair Play – Fairness Ordinance
• Burgess, Kelly. Raising the Granola Bar of Collegiate Nutrition
• Heichelbech, Evan. Offensive Line Coach Recovering from Brain Surgery – Mike Sanford
• Jessie, Alec. Conditioning …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 93, No. 17, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news. This issue contains articles:

• Coyle, Cameron & Monica Kast. Multiple Shots Fired Near Campus Late Tuesday Night
• DeLetter, Emily. Powerhouse – Jadier Rivera, Weightlifting
• Alvey, Rebekah. Bowling Green Hosts First Pride Festival on Saturday
• Hornsby, Morgan. Student Finds Sisterhood, Growth with Major Redz – Melody Dickerson
• Huff, Taylor. #MeToo Social Media Campaign – Sexual Harassment
• King, Jennifer. Editorial Cartoon re: Candy Corn
• Leonard, Nicole. Direct Discussion: Hollywood Confronted Rape Culture, So Should We
• Dimeo, Chris. Babylon Offers Authentic Oasis of Middle Eastern Cuisine
• Porter, Sam. Friday Night Lights – …

Ua19/16/2 Womens' Basketball Press Releases, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Archives Records

Press releases, photos and game statistics related to WKU women's basketball team from August to December 2017.

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 93, No. 8, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news. This issue contains articles:

• Ziege, Nicole. Student Government Association to Fund Inaugural Pride Festival
• Austin, Emma. American Dreamer – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Immigration
• DeLetter, Emily. Second Tuesday Salons Focuses on Incarcerated Men, Songwriting
• Collins, Emma. Virtual Reality Event Focuses on Refugee Crisis – No Lost Generation
• Coyle, Cameron. Cage the Elephant Offers WKU Free Concert
• Eastham, Lillie. LGBTQ Groups Host Annual Ice Cream Social
• King, Jennifer. Editorial Cartoon re: Condoms
• Leonard, Nicole. The B Grade Women in the Public Eye: Sex Double Standards Impede Universal Respect
• Hovell, …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 93, No. 7, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news. This issue contains articles:

• Alvey, Rebekah. Federal Comments Signal Title IX Change
• Collins, Emma. Out of Lines – Parking
• Kast, Monica. WKU Prepares for Potential Changes to Pension System
• Alvey, Rebekah. Habitat for Humanity Builds Sheds for Community
• Stahl, Matt. Bosnian Film Festival Continues This Week
• Dimeo, Chris. Fresh Out of the India Oven
• King, Jennifer. Editorial Cartoon re: Voting
• Hormell, David. Rise Above the Static – Activism
• Gabhart, Ebonee. Inclusivity: A Bowling Green Cornerstone
• Schweickart, Lydia. The Dead Walk – Kiwanis Club, Zombies
• Moore, Noah. SKyPAC Offers Free …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 93, No. 6, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news. This issue contains articles:

• Alvey, Rebekah. Losing Community – Levi Hanson, ROTC, Transgender
• Hornsby, Morgan. WKU, Bowling Green March to Defend Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – DACA
• DeLetter, Emily. University of Kentucky College of Medicine Construction Continues
• Ziege, Nicole. Student Government Association Approves Funding for Legal Observer Training
• Burgess, Kelly. Eating Produce or Producing Waste
• King, Jennifer. Editorial Cartoon re: Dating
• Murrer, Erick. Godless Entertainment
• Johnson, Kalyn. Working Towards a Cleaner Planet on Campus – Sustainability
• Porter, Sam. WKU Aims to Make History in Illinois – Football
• Manlove, …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 93, No. 3, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news. This issue contains articles:

• Singleton, John. Laundry Prices Increase on Campus
• Chisenhall, Jeremy & Evan Heichelbech. He’s Back – Mitchell Robinson, Basketball
• Sadrinia, Yasmine. Café Kicks Off International Year of Bosnia
• Mohr, Olivia. Student Government Association Makes Sustainability Permanent Effort
• Coyle, Cameron. WKU Chief of Police Decision is Imminent
• Alvey, Rebekah. WKU Develops New Diversity, Equality Plan
• Johnson, Kalyn. English Majors: We’re Not All Teachers
• Editorial Cartoon re: Welcome to WKU – Red Towel
• Murrer, Erick. From WKU with Love: Learning Life Lessons on the Hill
• Dimeo, Chris. Taste …

And They Entered As Ladies: When Race, Class And Black Femininity Clashed At Central High School, Misti Nicole Harper

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“And They Entered as Ladies: When Race, Class and Black Femininity Clashed at Central High School,” explores the intersectionality of race, gender and class status as middle-class black women led the integration movement and were the focal point of white backlash during the 1957 Little Rock Central High School crisis. Six of the nine black students chosen to integrate Central High School were carefully selected girls from middle-class homes, whose mothers and female family members played active parts in keeping their daughters enrolled at Central, while Daisy Gatson Bates orchestrated the integration of the capital’s school system. Nevertheless, these women …

The Hollow Class: African-American Class-Passing And The Popular, Whitney Martin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My project presses to include popular fiction, television, and film for serious critical consideration. To contextualize my research, I use theories that critically examine popular literature, connecting to the work of Janice Radway and Keenan Norris, and I study the African-American focus on class as explored by E. Franklin Frazier. In focusing on the popular, I highlight the everydayness of class and race anxieties. I build on Gwendolyn Foster’s work on class passing but stress racial intersections with identity performance. I rely on New Historicism and Critical Race Theory to substantiate my examination of the literature. I look at specific …

Stories Written On Concrete: Understanding And (Re)Imagining Street Lit And Culture, 1990-2007, Jacinta Saffold

Doctoral Dissertations

“Stories Written on Concrete: Understanding and Re-imagining Street Lit and Culture, 1990-2007,” coalesces around stories of urbanity and coming of age at the turn of the twenty-first century. As the Hip Hop generation reflected on the social, economic, and cultural shifts of the 1980s and 1990s, they took up paper and pen to immortalize the conflicting duality of the gritty and glamorous experience of growing up on a concrete cityscape in America. I interrogate how street lit disrupts normative literary representations of black life in print. Specifically, I consider how urban fiction writes against the African American literary canon in …

The Afroethnic Impulse And Renewal: African American Transculturations In Afro-Latino Bildung Narratives, 1961 To 2013, Trent Masiki

Doctoral Dissertations

Until now, there has been little sustained critical attention to the way African American literature, history, culture, and politics influence transculturation and ethnoracial identity formation in Afro-Latino bildung narratives. This dissertation addresses that oversight. The Afroethnic Impulse and Renewal: African American Transculturations in Afro-Latino Bildung Narratives, 1961 to 2013, examines a long, but often neglected, history of intercultural affinities and literary encounters between African Americans and Afro-Latinos from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. In The Afroethnic Impulse and Renewal, I explore African American literary and cultural influences in the personal essays, memoirs, and autobiographically inspired fiction of …

Moving Against Clothespins:The Poli(Poe)Tics Of Embodiment In The Poetry Of Miriam Alves And Audre Lorde, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines literary representations of the black female body in selected poetry by U.S. African American writer Audre Lorde and Afro-Brazilian writer Miriam Alves, focusing on how their literary projects construct and defy notions of black womanhood and black female sexualities in dialogue with national narratives and contexts. Within an historical, intersectional and transnational theoretical framework, this study analyses how the racial, gender and sexual politics of representation are articulated and negotiated within and outside the political and literary movements in the U.S. and Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s. As a theoretical framework, this research elaborates and uses …

When I See My Face: Painting The Portrait Of Black Women Leaders In The U.S. Federal Government, Antoinette Lavawn Allen

STEMPS Theses & Dissertations

Many Black women have chosen the federal government as their employer; a review of literature provides few studies on the Black women leaders in the federal government. Similarly, there is limited research about these women in academic settings. The purpose of this qualitative portraiture study is to explore the lived experiences of Black female leaders and the (a) challenges they face in leadership and (b) resilience strategies they use to overcome those challenges. The researcher used the portraiture methodology, which embraces traditional qualitative data sources, such as interviews and documents as well as creative expressions to include poetry, music, and …

My Crown And Glory: Community, Identity, Culture, And Black Women’S Concerns Of Hair Product-Related Breast Cancer Risk, Dede K. Teteh, Susanne B. Montgomery, Sabine Monice, Laura Stiel, Phyllis Y. Clark, Eudora Mitchell

Health Sciences and Kinesiology Faculty Articles

Breast cancer (BC) incidence rates for Black and non-Hispanic White women have recently converged; however, Black women continue to die at higher rates from the disease. Black women also use hair products containing hormonally active chemicals at higher rates than other races and ethnic groups. Studies now link chemical components in hair and personal care products to breast cancer risk. Using a community-based participatory research approach, this qualitative study explored community concerns about the role of hair products on breast cancer risk. Focus groups and key informant interviews using triangulation to assure relevant perspectives (women with and without breast cancer …

Bricolage Propriety: The Queer Practice Of Black Uplift, 1890–1905, Timothy M. Griffiths

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bricolage Propriety: The Queer Practice of Black Uplift, 1890-1905 situates the queer-of-color cultural imaginary in a relatively small nodal point: the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Through literary analysis and archival research on leading and marginal figures of Post-Reconstruction African American culture, this dissertation considers the progenitorial relationship of late-nineteenth century black uplift novels to modern-day queer theory. Bricolage Propriety builds on work about the sexual politics of early African American literature begun by women-of-color feminists of the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Hazel V. Carby, Ann duCille, and Claudia Tate. A new wave of …