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) …

Loving Blackness: A Sense Experience, Ricardo J. Millhouse

Feminist Pedagogy

The late bell hooks framed feminist pedagogies as a set of practices and systems that provide a description of feminism, a feminist learning environment, and ways to cultivate a community that is ready for feminist instruction. Using intersectionality, hooks (1992) discussed “loving blackness” as a representational and destabilizing practice to de-center whiteness. hooks (1992, 20) writes, “loving blackness as a political resistance transforms our ways of looking and being, and thus creates conditions necessary for us to move against the forces of domination and death and reclaim black life.” I propose a black feminist praxis teaching tool, “a sense experience,” …

The Black Ancestral Artist Path, Cerina Zuleica Shippey

Senior Projects Spring 2023

The Black Ancestral Artist Path is a project dedicated to uncovering the migratory pattern between Black American Creatives from NY to Paris. Why has this trend continued today from those of the Lost Generation? What about France entices the American? And how does living there change their art and sense of self? This project also compared Black French artists and their understanding of the French colonial empire. When these two groups are brought together, how do they learn from one another? Black Americans are forced to reckon with the both the freedom and the privilege they experience being able to …

White Histories Of Antiblack Violence: An Investigation Between Black Studies And Critical Theory, Anna E. Stoutenburg

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The main goal of this thesis is to evaluate both how antiblack violence functions and the way in which white people have, historically, perpetuated this violence. Although this thesis consults various areas within Black Studies, its main theoretical foundation is Afropessimism. The first chapter is mainly concerned with white ignorance; with an analysis of how various prominent white critical theorists have often been antiblack while attempting to theorize antiblackness. These theorists include Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Lee Edelman. The second chapter investigates the violent history of the concept of Black animality and how this idea is a …

The Burdens And Blessings Of Responsibility: Duty And Community In Nineteenth- Century America, Leslie Leonard

Doctoral Dissertations

The Burdens of Responsibility traces the emergence of moral responsibility as both a concept and problem in the nineteenth-century United States. Drawing on a range of sources –works of literature, philosophy, domestic manuals, newspaper archives – I show how many Americans began to conceive of moral responsibility as distinct from both duty and rules of behavior prescribed by traditional social roles. Although ethicists today take this distinction for granted, it was an emergent and problematic space in the nineteenth-century United States, brought into being by historical forces, including the rise of market capitalism, abolition, changing women’s roles, and increasing concern …

Nba: No (Anti-) Blackness Allowed, Rontaye M. Butler

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper serves as the foundational pillar in my art practice. This paper combines my experiences, influences, motivations, hopes, dreams, methodologies, historical research and contemporary analyses into a single document ripe for revisions. This document lives and breathes; its contents are constantly evolving, and should be continually challenged and evaluated for relevancy and validity. Part memoir, part manifesto, and part artist statement, it establishes where my work sits in the canon of fine art, even as I don’t know yet what that means. My writings, visual artworks and all other creative actions are tethered to this document and vice versa. …

Weird/Black/Play: Turning Racial Authenticity And Professorial Performance On Its Head In The Black Studies Classroom, Wendy M. Thompson

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This essay examines the expectations placed on black faculty to act as conduits of authentic blackness and black knowing even as they are undermined and undervalued in the classroom and other institutional settings. Paying special attention to the way that racial performance, engaged learning, and the role of the black instructor converge in the black studies classroom, I offer the black/weird as a framework (departure/positioning) from which students can engage in black/weird/play, a remedy that interrupts students’ desire for a particular hegemonic racial performance from black faculty while stimulating critical collective inquiry about black history, experience, culture, and the self. …

Outside Literary Studies: Black Criticism And The University, Andy Hines

Staff Scholarship

This striking contribution to Black literary studies examines the practices of Black writers in the mid-twentieth century to revise our understanding of the institutionalization of literary studies in America. Andy Hines uncovers a vibrant history of interpretive resistance to university-based New Criticism by Black writers of the American left. These include well-known figures such as Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry as well as still underappreciated writers like Melvin B. Tolson and Doxey Wilkerson. In their critical practice, these and other Black writers levied their critique from “outside” venues: behind the closed doors of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in …

Examining Motivators That Influenced African American And Latinx Students To Degree Completion Of A Doctoral Program, Travis L. Stokes

Theses and Dissertations

This applied dissertation was designed to provide an investigation of the motivators that influence African American and Latinx students to complete a doctoral program. There are numerous studies that show data on low enrollment and retention of this population. Further, there is ample evidence of attrition, but there is a need to hear their voices share the experiences of successful doctoral graduates from this population.

The researcher posited systemic racism in education caused low enrollment and graduation rates among African American and Latinx students. Then, an interview protocol was developed to elicit responses regarding what caused the persistence to complete …

Skin Worlds: Black And Indigenous Science Fiction Theorizing Since The 1970s, Lou Cornum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation unfolds along two trajectories, the first following from an ascendant interest in minoritarian traditions in speculative and science fiction and the second following the reiterative conversations across Black and Indigenous Studies. Science fiction theorizing is introduced as a frame for thinking these two trajectories together, with science fiction texts by authors Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia Butler, Gerald Vizenor, Leslie Marmon Silko and Samuel Delany providing a paraliterary mode of imagining the planetary from which to understand the interconnected processes of settler colonialism and trans-Atlantic slavery. Science Fiction theorizing across these texts disrupts notions of linear progressive time, human/alien boundaries, …

Harlem To Infinity: An Intellectual History And Critique Of Historical Frameworks On The New Negro Renaissance, Jeryl Raphael

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

The Impacts Of Incarceration On The Wellbeing Of Family Members Of African American Males Who Experience The U.S Prison System: A Phenomenological Study, Tremaine N. Leslie

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

African Americans encounter a high rate of imprisonment, and the social, economic, mental and other effects of imprisonment are extended to their families and communities (Roberts, 2004). In addition to separating individuals from their families and communities, incarceration maximizes the probability for fractured relationships, fragmented communities, and encumbers the public service systems (DeHart, Shapiro & Clone, 2018).Therefore, the purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to explore the mental health effects of incarceration on the family members of African American males who experience the U.S prison system.

The theoretical framework utilized for this study was the critical race theory (CRT) immersed …

Lamin Fofana: Blues, Alaina Claire Feldman, Dino Dincer Sirin, Lamin Fofana

Publications and Research

Catalogue for the exhibition "Lamin Fofana: Blues" presented at Baruch College's Mishkin Gallery in 2020.

The Tuskegee Revolt: Student Activism, Black Power, And The Legacy Of Booker T. Washington, Brian P. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“The Tuskegee Revolt: Student Activism, Black Power, and the Legacy of Booker T. Washington” is a historical study of a student movement that challenged prevailing educational and political ideas in the nation’s most ideologically important historically black university. The late 1960s student movement at Tuskegee Institute played a significant off-campus role in shaping local, regional, and national social movements and politics. In the process, these Tuskegee students turned their attention back on-campus, and attempted to radically revise their school’s educational framework. Founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881, Tuskegee Institute represents the origin of a particular (and recurring) political-educational-paradigm for …

The Effect Of Gender And Racial Stereotypes And Education-Related Beliefs On The Academic And Social Identity Development Of Urban African American Girls, Wanda Marie Shealey

ETD Archive

This qualitative, ethnographic study explores various tensions and struggles around gender and racial stereotypes that three urban teenage African American girls encounter as they try to develop a sense of oneself as an individual and in relation to the world. The purpose of this study was to explore Black high school girls’ experiences in a predominately urban public school in the Midwest. This study is guided by the following research question: In what way do gender and racial bias contribute to the self-perception of African American adolescent girls? Interrogating the multiple standpoints that inform African American female identity and how …

The Mask Strikes Back: Blackness As Aporia In Moby-Dick And Benito Cereno, Jerome D. Clarke

Student Publications

What is the American Gothic a reaction to? Whereas other thinkers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne locates the building blocks of the American Gothic in Puritan Christianity or Amerindian Genocide, I argue that Melville posits the genesis of chattel slavery and the construction of racial category as the repressed events that haunt the Americas and return uninvited. By using the Gothic motif of the living corpse, the famed writer of Moby-Dick addresses the social bereavement which Blackness comes to represent in the Americas. By looking for truth on the skin and flesh, the main characters of Moby-Dick and “Benito Cereno” represent …

The Enigmatic "Cross-Over" Leadership Life Of Dr. Mary Mcleod Bethune (1875-1955), Greer Charlotte Stanford-Randle

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The dissertation is a deep study of an iconic 20^th century female, African American leader whose acclaim developed not only from her remarkable first generation post-Reconstruction Era beginnings, but also from her mid-century visibility among Negroes and some Whites as a principal spokesperson for her people. Mary Jane McLeod Bethune arose from the Nadir- the darkest period for Negroes after the Civil War and three subsequent US Constitutional Amendments. She led thousands of Negro women, despite social adversity, to organize around their own aspirations for improved social and material lives among America’s diverse citizens., i.e. “the melting pot.” The …

Primitive At The Plantation's Edge, Robert F. Reid-Pharr

Publications and Research

There comes a time when the only thing that one can do is admit defeat. Standing at the tail end of a Black Studies movement established as part of the articulation of anti-segregationist, anti-colonialist African and African American political and cultural insurgencies, one is made painfully aware of a sort of necessary and inevitable social and professional marginalization structuring the everyday existence of the so-called black scholar. The broadly imagined ethical outlines of even the most valued projects of black intellectualism continue as ornamental, overly moralistic, never quite fully valid aspects of the industry / government / education complex that …

Spice Sisters: Religion, Freedom And Escape Of Women In African American And Indian Literatures, Lovely Koshy

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on women in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun and Rabindranath Tagore's three short stories. Hansberry writes during a period in America when racism, segregation, and black migration to the North weighed heavy upon the psyche of black women. Tagore writes during a time when British control, sati system, caste system, and dharma leave Indian women voiceless. Both express their disagreement with entrenched norms and institutions that have been in place for hundreds of years, a task that initially may seem to be an impossible undertaking, and unlikely to bring about expected change. This work reveals …

Stigma And The Acceptability Of Depression Treatments Among African American Clergy, Connie Gardner

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this cross sectional study was to investigate stigma associated with depression treatments and to approximate its association with treatment acceptability among African American Clergy. There were 109 African American clergy who completed three measures: treatment specific stigma instrument, treatment acceptability instrument, and a demographic questionnaire, anonymously. Three hypotheses were tested using descriptive statistics, Mantel-Haenszel common odds ratio estimate, Pearson correlation coefficient, and ordinal logistic regression. Statistical analysis revealed stigma did increase with the expansion of the social circle; Christian mental health counseling had the highest acceptability rate among clergy not pastoral or lay counseling and there was …

Institutional Quilombos? Black Studies In Brazil And The United States, Dalila Negreiros

Theses and Dissertations

The literature on Black Studies, Afro-Brazilian Studies and Comparative Race Relations between Brazil and the United State has been dedicated to the study of Black activism and education. However, there is a gap in comparative studies focused on Black Studies units in the United States and Afro-Brazilian studies in Brazil. The dissertation “Institutional Quilombos? Black Studies in Brazil and the United States” investigates how Black Studies centers and departments in Brazil and the United States exist, survive and act politically as educational and anti-racist spaces in six different institutions: the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee; Harvard University; Temple University; the …

When Black Meets White In The Heart Of Worship: A Case-Study Of Musical Changes In A Multiracial Church, Serge Volpe

Masters Theses

The Worldwide Church of God began as a denomination relying on certain Jewish practices and other Euro-centric distinctions to define its' identity. In the New York City area, African-American churchgoers exceeded that of whites; yet church liturgy retained its European-American flavor. When the denomination underwent transformation in the 1990s, many congregants were unable to accept changes, including new musical styles, and reacted in a manner inconsistent with what church leaders had hoped for. This thesis examines what some African-Americans experienced during this period when liturgy changed to include music representative of their culture. Interviews were conducted with African-American churchgoers from …

“A Small Revolution”: The Role Of A Black Power Revolt In Creating And Sustaining A Black Studies Department At The University Of Minnesota, Jared E. Leighton

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the Morrill Hall Takeover of January, 1969, and the creation of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Further, it follows the process of sustaining a black studies department including acquiring qualified professors, maintaining student interest, negotiating the relationship to the black community and overcoming funding shortages, as well as other bureaucratic difficulties. The events at the University of Minnesota are placed in the larger context of the long-term development of black studies, the rise of the Black Power Movement and Minnesota’s tradition of liberalism. This work draws on reports from the University of …

The New Negro Arts And Letters Movement Among Black University Students In The Midwest, 1914-1940, Richard M. Breaux

Black Studies Faculty Publications

The 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s were an exciting time for black artists and writers in the United States. Much of the historical literature highlights the so-called Harlem Renaissance or its successor, the Black Chicago Renaissance. Few studies, however, document the influence of these artistic movements outside major urban cities such as New York, Chicago, or Washington, DC. In his 1988 essay on black education, historian Ronald Butchart argued that the educational effects of black social movements such as the Harlem Renaissance on black schooling are unclear and underexplored. This article explores the influence of the New Negro arts and letters …

Exploring Race, Racism, Racialism, And Empowerment: The Importance Of Researching And Documenting The Historical Experiences Of People Of Color At Pwis, Richard M. Breaux

Black Studies Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The presenter discusses his experience with researching African and African American students' experiences in the archival collections of over 20 public and private PWls. Offers suggestions for research on campuses with little or no such documentation, and discusses the importance of oral history projects and research initiatives to build collections.