Sociology Commons^™

Spirits In The Dark: Black Community Education And The Light It Bears, Sydoni A. Ellwood

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Spirits in the Dark” is a digital space dedicated to the efforts of Black community education. It memorializes the commitment and strategies of spirits, light bearers like Mary McLeod Bethune and Huey Newton – people who devoted their lives to the fortification of their communities via education. This project also presents a variety of answers to one specific question: What lessons can school leaders and educators incorporate from community-controlled education programs to make learning spaces affirming and engaging for Black students? In totality, the digital space contributes to conversations in urban education and sociology, specifically the ones being held around …

Counterstories Of Black High School Students And Graduates Of Nyc Independent Schools: A Narrative Case Study, Kahdeidra M. Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public youth resistance movements in 2019 and 2020 exposed the entrenchment of racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and classism across New York City independent schools (NYCIS). In order to support the imminent need for schools to provide effective diversity, inclusion, and equity supports that address broad issues of school climate, relationships, and pedagogy, there is a need to better understand the specific, hyperlocal experiences of Black/African Descendant (BAD) students, who occupy several unique, unexplored spaces in educational research. The following four research questions helped to conceptualize the experiences that support and hinder the academic success and long term well-being of BAD students …

“I’M Real I Thought I Told Ya”: Developing Critical Media Literacy Through U.S. Latinx Digital Media Representations, Solange T. Castellar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how audiences engage with U.S. Latinx media representations through the practice of critical media literacy. I interrogate how media consumers construct critical media literacy through interacting with U.S. Latinx figures on digital media platforms, particularly on the social-media app, Twitter, and the user-generated video content platform, YouTube. Throughout this thesis, I argue that users on these platforms who engage with U.S. Latinx pop culture figures, like Jennifer Lopez and Belcalis Almanzar (Cardi B), read, digest, and comprehend a variety of multimedia images, texts, or videos, and that this engagement becomes an accessible form of critical media literacy, …

Losing Louisiana: Race, Techno-Science, And The Disappearing Geographies Of The Lower Mississippi River Delta, Monica Patrice Barra

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on eighteen months of ethnographic and historical research in southeast coastal Louisiana (USA), this dissertation explores the racial histories, engineering and scientific practices, and geophysical processes that have shaped land loss and coastal restoration in the lower Mississippi River Delta. Rather than treating land loss simply as a natural process or matter of environmental restoration, this ethnography examines its cultural, material, and political dimensions, especially for communities of color that have already experienced long histories of loss — of property, livelihood, and political rights. A focus on the geophysical transformations of the river - dictating land growth, sinking, and …

Against Criminalization And Pathology: The Making Of A Black Achievement Praxis, Charles M. Green Sr.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Utilizing 29 in-depth semi-structured interviews, the life-course narratives of Black male scholars who, as victims of varying manifestations of structural violence, have “beat the odds” academically. Findings suggest that Black men and boys benefit from positive, racially-informed socialization that assists in the development of an internalized identity that (a) acts as a protective and resistant barrier against some of the impediments of institutional racism, (b) operates as a counter-criminogenic influence, and (c) facilitates educational resilience. Criminogenic Resistance Theory (C.RT) is presented as an alternative conceptualization of the process by which Black boys resist the criminogenic influences of structuralized violence.

Progressive Commemoration: Public Statues Of Historical Women In Urban American Cities, Melanie D. Chin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Women who made notable accomplishments are underrepresented in commemoration. Some American cities have brought women to the forefront of becoming visible through commemoration in statues. This thesis compares the commemoration of historical women in four different American cities. Stakeholders hold the key to implementing and changing public policy to increase the visibility of women and people of color in public monuments. Cities which lack representation of women and people of color may learn from and follow the efforts of a leading city to achieve lasting and effective change in representing those who historically been underrepresented.

Black Business As Activism: Ebony Magazine And The Civil Rights Movement, Seon Britton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the fight for justice, equality, and true liberation, African American organizations and institutions have often acted as a voice for the African American community at large focusing on common issues and concerns. With the civil rights movement being broadcast across the world, there was no better time for African American community and civil rights organizations to take a role within the movement in combatting the oppression, racism, and discrimination of white supremacy. Often left out of this history of the civil rights movement is an analysis of black-owned private businesses, also giving shape to the African American community. Black …

Pawns Of Policy And Problematized Perception: The Sustainability Of Inequality Through The Space Of African-American Childhood, Jen-I S. Costosa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

African American children are simultaneously entrapped by the construct of race and while excluded from the construct of childhood. Race has bifurcated the timeline(s) and bastion of childhood in which one has clear milestones and expectations and the other is nonlinear, fickle, and subject to a suspicious gaze. Recent research describes this phenomenon as “dehumanization”, “age overestimation”, and “adultification.” However, the aforementioned classifications of African American children’s’ experience presents the assumption in which this particular group would first have to be viewed both as human and also as a child, which is arguable. Policy, both children centric and otherwise, along …

Race, Sexuality, And Masculinity On The Down Low, Stephen Kochenash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a so-called post-racial America, a new gay identity has flourished and come into the limelight. However, in recent years, researchers have concluded that not all men who have sex with other men (MSM) self-identify as gay, most noticeably a large population of Black men. It is possible that a tainted history of Black enslavement in this country that is inextricably linked with ideas of space, surveillance, subversion, and survival inform a Black male’s self-identification as being “on the down low” (DL). This begs the question: What does mainstream society view as gay-ness and how is the DL constructed …

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 …

Black Models Matter: Challenging The Racism Of Aesthetics And The Facade Of Inclusion In The Fashion Industry, Scarlett L. Newman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The global fashion market is expanding every day, but often, the global fashion runways do not reflect that reality. On average, black models make up for six percent of models used on the runway during the fashion month calendar. This small percentage is also mirrored in advertisements and editorials featured in popular fashion magazines. In the 1970s, black models were met with great opportunities, and that success trickled down into the 1980s and the 1990s. As the 90s came to a close, top designers opted for an aesthetic that ultimately excluded models of color, but black models beared the brunt …

On The Midnight Train To Georgia: Afro-Caribbeans And The New Great Migration To Atlanta, Latoya Asantelle Tavernier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the 21st century, Atlanta, Georgia has become a major new immigrant destination. This study focuses on the migration of Afro-Caribbeans to Atlanta and uses data collected from in-depth interviews, ethnography, and the US Census to understand: 1) the factors that have contributed to the emergence of Atlanta as a new destination for Afro-Caribbean immigrants and 2) the ways in which Atlanta's large African American population, and its growing immigrant population, shape the incorporation of Afro-Caribbeans, as black immigrants, into the southern city. I find that Afro-Caribbeans are attracted to Atlanta for a variety of reasons, including warmer climate, job …

The Myth Of The Unteachable: Youth, Race And The Capacity Of Alternative Pedagogy, Cathy R. Borck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My research consisted of three years of qualitative inquiry, including 62 interviews with members of the Department of Education, school administrators, teachers and students, as well as a yearlong ethnography at a transfer school that I chose because of its history of success with the city's hardest- to-reach youth. To my knowledge, mine is the first formal study of New York City transfer schools. "Transfer schools" are New York City's public alternative schools, which serve "over-age, under- credited" high school students (i.e. students who are "behind" in school). These students experience many challenges and interruptions to their education, including homelessness, …

Birthing, Blackness, And The Body: Black Midwives And Experiential Continuities Of Institutional Racism, Keisha La'nesha Goode

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Within the last decade, historical and contemporary accounts of midwives, along with the efficacy of the Midwives Model of Care for pregnancy, childbirth and general women's health, have become increasing popular in mainstream publications and documentaries. Yet, very few of these accounts represent historical or contemporary black midwives (and midwives of color, more generally). Despite a long history of midwifery in the black community, black women currently represent less than 2% of the nation's reported 15,000 midwives. Relatedly, black women and infants experience the worst birth outcomes of any racial-ethnic cohort in the United States.

In the early 20th century, …

Existing But Not Living: Neo-Civil Death And The Carceral State, Calvinjohn Nagel Smiley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2010, the United States prison releases exceeded prison admission for the first time since the Bureau of Justice Statistics began collecting jurisdictional data in 1977. Prisoner reentry--the transition from prison to community--has grown exponentially in the 21st century. While individuals are coming home in larger quantities, many formerly incarcerated men and women lose social, political, and economic rights, otherwise known as civil death. The fundamental purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of civil death on prisoner reentry. More specifically, how does the loss of civil rights construct notions of citizenship for recently released men and women? …