Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Race, Sense Of Belonging, And The African American Student Experience At Predominantly White Institutions, Anthony Kane

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research study utilized a critical race theoretical framework and methodology to explore the lived experiences of African American students at a predominantly White institution. The purpose of this study was to identify how race impacts the sense of belonging of African American students at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). This study highlighted the racialized experiences of African American students at a predominantly White institution and how these experiences impacted their sense of belonging. Additionally, this study sought to understand the type of support African Americans students preferred and needed in order to develop a positive sense of belonging.

Six African …

The Heritage Of The Spanish Antilles, Daniel Nieves

Open Educational Resources

This course seeks to explore the heritage of the Spanish Caribbean—primarily Cuba, Dominican Republic/Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. We will place particular emphasis on the historical, cultural and ethnic forces that have shaped the character of the people of these islands. As well we will explore the variety of societies and cultures of the Spanish Caribbean in their historical and contemporary setting up to and including the (im)migration experience of Spanish Caribbean people to urban North America.

Crip Time In Fin-De-Siècle Spain: Disability, Degeneration, And Eugenics, Erika Rodriguez

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A period of intense nation-building, the late nineteenth century was marked by the search for medical and legal solutions to the increasing number of bodies that did not align with culturally constructed expectations of productivity and reproduction in Spanish modernity. Authors of this time used representations of disability to engage in urgent political questions about population control and the rights of individuals in the face of increasing medical intervention. In carrying out this analysis, I raise the question of how representations of disability created a space to reconfigure the social values that determined what lives matter. Focusing on canonical realist …

Affect And Manhattan’S West Side Piers, Ricardo J. Millhouse

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Derek P. McCormack (2010) argues, "Affect, is like an atmosphere: it might not be visible, but at any given point it might be sensed ... Emotion, in turn, can be understood as the sociocultural expression of this felt intensity" (643). This paper puts McCormack (2010) and Ben Anderson (2009) into conversation to think through the ways in which atmosphere in relation to affective and emotive life has been conceptualized. I center the affective atmospheres that happen with queer bodies that make New York's west side piers queerly affective. I use "queer bodies" to signal the dis-identification with heteronormativity or binaristic …

The Concentration Of Household Income In The United States By Race/Ethnicity, 1967 - 2018, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report studies income distribution in the United States between 1967 and 2018 by race and ethnicity.

Methods: The data were derived from the US Census Bureau's Historical Income Tables: Income Inequality

Results: The upper 5% of households controlled 17% of total household income in 1967 and 23% in 2018. The upper 20% of households accounted for 44% of all income in 1967 and 52% in 2018. Economic growth, which has been impressive in the period under consideration, did not result in rising household incomes across the social hierarchy. Between 1967 and 2018 the upper 5% of income-earning households …

A Socio-Demographic Analysis Of Responses To Terrorism, Gabriel Rubin, Christopher Salvatore

Christopher Salvatore

Extensive research has found that there are differences in reported levels of fear of crime and associated protective actions influenced by socio-demographic characteristics such as race and gender. Further studies, the majority of which focused on violent and property crime, have found that specific demographic characteristics influence fear of crime and protective behaviors. However, little research has focused on the influence of socio-demographic characteristics on perceptions, and protective actions in response to the threat of terrorism. Using data from the General Social Survey, this study compared individual-level protective actions and perceptions of the effectiveness of protective responses to the 9/11 …

Making “The Garden City Of The South”: Beautification, Preservation, And Downtown Planning In Augusta, Georgia, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

This article illuminates how a smaller southern city engaged broader planning approaches. Civic leaders, especially women, pushed and partnered with municipal administrations to beautify Augusta, Georgia, a city with extraordinarily wide streets and a long tradition of urban horticulture. Their efforts in the 1900s to 1950s, often in concert with close by planners, led to a confluence of urban beautification, historic preservation, and downtown revitalization in the 1960s. This coordinated activity reshaped Augusta’s cityscape, exacerbated racial tensions, and enshrined principles of the City Beautiful, Garden City, and parks movements long after they receded in large cities, influencing the work of …

Whose Middle Ages?: Teachable Moments For An Ill-Used Past [Table Of Contents], Andrew Albin, Mary C. Erler, Thomas O'Donnell, Nicholas L. Paul, Nina Rowe

History

Whose Middle Ages? is an interdisciplinary collection of short, accessible essays intended for the nonspecialist reader and ideal for teaching at an undergraduate level. Each of twenty-two essays takes up an area where digging for meaning in the medieval past has brought something distorted back into the present: in our popular entertainment; in our news, our politics, and our propaganda; and in subtler ways that inform how we think about our histories, our countries, and ourselves. Each author looks to a history that has refused to remain past and uses the tools of the academy to read and re-read familiar …

The Prison-Televisual Complex, Allison Page, Laurie Ouellette

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

In 2016, the A&E cable network partnered with the Clark County Jail in Jeffersonville, Indiana, to incarcerate seven volunteers as undercover prisoners for two months. This article takes the reality television franchise 60 Days In as a case study for analyzing the convergence of prison and television, and the rise of what we call the prison-televisual complex in the United States, which denotes the imbrication of the prison system with the television industry, not simply television as an ideological apparatus. 60 Days In represents an entanglement between punishment and the culture industries, whereby carceral logics flow into the business and …

“This Has Never Really Been About Books”: A Latcrit Case Study Of Intellectual Freedom, Adriana Marie Mccleer

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation critically examines historical and contemporary traditions and practices at an intersection of Library and Information Studies (LIS) and K-12 education to identify barriers and limitations to intellectual freedom related to race and ethnicity. It presents a qualitative case study, first documenting the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) Mexican American Studies (MAS) program, a public K-12 ethnic studies program in Tucson, Arizona between 1998 and 2012. Next, it details actions that led to the dismantling of the program, including Arizona officials designing and passing two laws that put financial pressure on the district to end the MAS program in …

Socioeconomic Status's Impact On The Experience Of Loneliness, Tessa Samuels

Sociology & Anthropology Theses

Loneliness is a feeling that is nearly universal, yet some people are more vulnerable to prolonged exposures of the experience of loneliness. Due to the subjective nature of loneliness, there is minimal literature on loneliness without the variable of social isolation (Hawkley et al. 2008, Ryan et al. 2008, Kearns et al. 2015, Lee and Ishii-Kuntz 1987) or social capital (Benner and Wang 2014, Andersson 1998, Ryan et al. 2008, Kearns et al. 2015) involved. There are numerous variables that impact loneliness. One must consider age — there has been solid gerontology research that reveals that elderly people are less …

Commemorative Bodies: (Un)Making Racial Order And Cuban White Supremacy In Little Havana's Heritage District, Corinna Jeanne Moebius

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation unearths memory- and place-making practices, processes and “racializing regimes of representation” in Little Havana’s heritage district, now a major tourism destination in Miami, Florida. It draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and consultations of various archives that span decades back to the 1960s and trace the origins of the district in plans for a “Latin Quarter.”

My analyses borrow from and combine various bodies of scholarly work to examine and deconstruct the use of always multi-vocal “commemorative bodies” for the production of racial narratives that are embedded in--and give shape to--acts of memorialization and commemoration.

By examining the …

'Race, Racism, And American Law': A Seminar From The Indigenous, Black, And Immigrant Legal Perspectives, Eduardo R.C. Capulong, Andrew King-Ries, Monte Mills

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Flagrant racism has characterized the Trump era from the onset. Beginning with the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has inflamed long-festering racial wounds and unleashed White supremacist reaction to the nation’s first Black President, in the process destabilizing our sense of the nation’s racial progress and upending core principles of legality, equality, and justice. As law professors, we sought to rise to these challenges and prepare the next generation of lawyers to succeed in a different and more polarized future. Our shared commitment resulted in a new course, “Race, Racism, and American Law,” in which we sought to explore the roots …

Chitown Loves Youhip Hop’S Alternative Spatializing Narratives And Activism To Trump’S Hatefulcampaign Rhetoric About Chicago, George Villanueva

School of Communication: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign rhetoric about violence in Chicago spatialized a narrative that branded the city as the poster child of urban disarray. His bombast lacked any contextual understanding of the issue and offered no productive pathways for collective solutions. Alternatively, I argue in this paper that a rising collection of Chicago hip hop artists were producing musical discourses in 2016 that not only challenged Trump’s negative rants, but also spatialized a multilayered narrative of the intersections between hip hop and activism in the city. Through textual analysis of three tracks from three breakout artists in 2016, my goal …

The Affective Politics Of Twitter, Johnathan C. Flowers

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

Given the increasing encroachment of Twitter into offline experience, it has become necessary to look beyond the formation of identity in online spaces to the ways in which identities surface through the formation of affective communities organized through the use of technocultural assemblages, or the platforms, algorithms, and digital networks through which affect circulates in an online space. This essay focuses on the microblogging website Twitter as one such technocultural assemblage whose hashtag functionality allows for the circulation of affect among bodies which “surface” within the affective communities organized on Twitter through their alignment with and orientation by hashtags which …

Does Money Indeed Buy Happiness? “The Forms Of Capital” In Fitzgerald’S Gatsby And Watts’ No One Is Coming To Save Us, Allie Harrison Vernon

English (MA) Theses

Looking primarily at two critically acclaimed texts that concern themselves with American citizenship—F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Stephanie Powell Watts’ No One is Coming to Save Us—I analyze the claims made about citizenship identities, rights, and consequential access to said rights. I ask, how do these narratives about citizenship sustain, create, or re-envision American myth? Similarly, how do the narratives interact with the dominant culture at large? Do any of these texts achieve oppositional value, and/or modify the complex hegemonic structure? I use Pierre Bourdieu’s “The Forms of Capital” to investigate the ways in which economic, cultural, …

Black Body Memory: A Philosophy Of The Talk, Autumn Redcross

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project offers the term Black body memory to point toward the threatened existential disposition of Black people in society today. Moreover, Black body memory points to the narrative paradigm of a shared experience. While popular conceptions theorize race as a social construction, the lived reality of Black people is frequently imbued by racialization and racism. Black body memory emerges from the intersection of the Black body articulated by Franz Fanon, Charles Johnson, and George Yancy, among others, and body memory, as described by Edward Casey and Thomas Fuchs. Black body memory is a culturally-laden and sedimented lived reality. The …

American Beauty Standards: “Paling” In Comparison To The White Norm, Kristen Marrinan

Sociology Senior Seminar Papers

America has a culturally accepted norm of what makes someone beautiful. A standard that is hard to meet. Being light-skinned, blonde and blue-eyed is the benchmark of beauty, of what is most desirable. But is that really what it takes to be attractive in America? This research examines the relationship between race, birth-place, ethnicity and self-rated attractiveness. The General Social Survey (2016) provides the quantitative data for this study. While past literature explores the connections between identity, self-esteem, and attractiveness, it does not explore the intersection of different identifying characteristics. Group position and Colourism approaches provide the theoretical foundations for …

Does Family Income Determine A Children Future Educational Attainment Level?, Diaisha T. Richards

Applied Economics Theses

Family income and education have been a major concern in a variety of researches, and as a topic in society. These two components are a major concern because they are known to be key elements in determining future success for an individual. Various studies investigated the significance, correlations and impacts these two factors have on one another. It is common for the amount of family income obtained to determine how much education one will receive in the future. This study focuses on testing the hypothesis that family income determines how much education a child will receive in the future. By …

Black Female Graduate Students' Experiences Of Racial Microaggressions At A Southern University, Kendra Elizabeth Shoge

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have found that microaggressions can cause psychological distress, frustration, avoidance, confusion, resentment, hopelessness, and fear. Previous studies from Southern universities have addressed the adjustment experiences of Black women in graduate programs, obstacles faced by Black women in higher education and strategies to overcome those obstacles, and factors associated with Black student motivation and achievement. Discrimination and racism are factors identified in those studies, however, there is little research on the experiences of Black women in graduate programs and the impact of racial microaggressions on them.

The purpose of this study was to examine Black female graduate students’ experiences of …

Italian/Americans And The American Racial System: Contadini To Settler Colonists?, Stephen J. Cerulli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the relationship between ethnicity and race, “whiteness,” in the American racial system through the lens of Italian/Americans. Firstly, it overviews the current scholarship on Italian/Americans and whiteness. Secondly, it analyzes methodologies that are useful for understanding race in an American context. Thirdly, it presents a case study on the Columbus symbol and the battle over identity that arose out of, and continues over, this symbol. Finally, this thesis provides suggestions using the case study and methodologies to open up new ways of understanding Italian/Americans and the American racial system.

Neighborliness: A Call To Racial And Socioeconomic Equity In Charlotte, North Carolina, David Daniel Docusen

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

In Mark 12:28-34, Jesus is challenged by an expert in religious law to identify the most important commandment. He replies that loving God and neighbors is the most important of the over six hundred commandments. This research project investigates how healing can come to communities that have been racially and socioeconomically divided when a spirit of biblical neighborliness is present. The ubiquity of this call to neighborliness throughout Scripture highlights the importance of this topic, but special emphasis is given to Mark 12:28-34 and Isaiah 58:1-14 in order to focus the effort and scope of this dissertation.

Chapter One surveys …

The Rebel Made Me Do It: Mascots, Race, And The Lost Cause, Patrick Smith

Dissertations

Public memory is commonly tied to street names, toponyms, and monuments because they are interacted with daily and are often directly associated with race, class, and regimes of power. Mascots are not thought of in the same manner although they are present as part of everyday life. The childish or sometimes comedic nature of the mascot discounts it from many considerations of its influence, symbolism and history. Nonetheless this research focuses on the term “Rebel” as a secondary school mascot. The term possesses the trappings of race because the American vernacular ties the word to the Confederate States of America …

Asian American Politics: A Case Study Of Hmong Americans In St. Paul, Mn, Thilee Yost

Honors College

Despite being a relatively new refugee group relocating to the United States during the 1970s and 1980s, Hmong Americans have emerged as a major political influence in St. Paul, Minnesota. With a population of over 68,000 Hmong Americans, St. Paul has been called the Hmong capital of the world. It has a very dense network of Hmong individuals who have proven to be an emerging political force. During the past November 2018 midterms seven, a record number, of Hmong Americans were elected to public office in the Twin Cities area. Since Asian Americans are expected to make up 10% of …

Radical Moves: Negotiating Community And Transformation With (Some Of) Sit/South Africa’S Students Of Color, Kavita Sundaram

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Finding its foundations in inquiries of community, knowledge(s), relational truths, and radical transformation, this project wonders specifically how students of color from the School of International Training (SIT)/South Africa: Multiculturalism and Human Rights Spring 2019 semester abroad in Cape Town experience, negotiate with, and envision the potential futures of community/ies in and around the program. My research operates within a socioprogrammatic context which is highly racialized, seeking to listen to, document, and place in conversation the perspectives of our students of color. My meditations ground themselves in the individual and collective narrative(s) of our students of color, explored primarily in …

Must Stay Woke: Black Celebrity Voices Of Dissent In The Post Post-Racial Era, Lily Kunda

Institute for the Humanities Theses

In today’s racially charged climate there is an expectation that black celebrities cry out #BlackLivesMatter, get on the field to #TakeAKnee and be #UnapologeticallyBlack whenever they are in the spotlight. This climate transcends what was once seen as a post-racial America— a time where the media portrayed race as no longer being an issue— and encourages black celebrities to address racism. Prior research on black celebrities by Sarah J. Jackson, Ellis Cashmore, bell hooks, James Baldwin and others acknowledges the historical burden placed on black celebrities to publicly discuss racism and represent blackness in order to challenge dominant narratives. Today, …

Transnational Sex-Positive Play Parties: The Sexual Politics Of Care For Community-Making At A Kinky Salon, Christina Bazzaroni

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To date, feminist geographers and geographers of sexualities have yet to fully interrogate post sexual revolution society. In this dissertation I examine the politics of sex-positive play parties, through the case study of Kinky Salon (KS) – a global organization that claims to catalyze a contemporary sex culture revolution. This project expands on previous feminist geography and geographies of sexualities scholarship centering queer, kinky sex, demonstrating that non-normative sexual practices are informed by and contribute to sexual revolution legacies. I extend feminist geographies’ theorizing of affect and emotion to show how sexual intimacies are care-work, with the emotional power to …

A Socio-Demographic Analysis Of Responses To Terrorism, Gabriel Rubin, Christopher Salvatore

Gabriel Rubin

Extensive research has found that there are differences in reported levels of fear of crime and associated protective actions influenced by socio-demographic characteristics such as race and gender. Further studies, the majority of which focused on violent and property crime, have found that specific demographic characteristics influence fear of crime and protective behaviors. However, little research has focused on the influence of socio-demographic characteristics on perceptions, and protective actions in response to the threat of terrorism. Using data from the General Social Survey, this study compared individual-level protective actions and perceptions of the effectiveness of protective responses to the 9/11 …

Hybrid Media Activism: Ecologies, Imaginaries, Algorithms, Dorothy Kidd

Media Studies

Review of Treré, Emiliano. Hybrid Media Activism: Ecologies, Imaginaries, Algorithms. New York and London: Routledge. ISBN: 978-1-138-21814-7.

Career Ascension Of African-American Men In The Army Warrant Officer Corps, James Joseph Williams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The military and scholars assert that the military has created an organization that is based on merit. However, statistics show that African American military men are more likely to be subjected to the military's justice system, they are less likely to promote to the most senior enlisted and officer ranks, they are more likely to receive a negative discharge, and they are disproportionately represented on the military's death row. Despite these assertions, many African-American men succeed within the military structure. Therefore, this qualitative study was conducted to examine the stories of senior field grade warrant officer African American men to …