Race and Ethnicity Commons^™

Stay Woke, Langston A. Williams

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the pages of my thesis, I comprehensively analyze the processes, intentions, and production of my thesis film Stay Woke. My examination will exhaustively probe every stage of the film from development to preproduction to production to postproduction and beyond. Individual aspects of this process including writing, casting, locations, production design, cinematography, directing, budgeting, scheduling, and postproduction workflows will be detailed. As I make elaborations in each section, I will explain my learning experiences from each day’s new tasks, challenges, and lessons. All of these things will be framed with regards to the overall goal and themes of the …

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance As A Site For Adolescent Social-Emotional And Political Development, Lauren M. Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values …

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 …

Who Benefits From Blackness? The White Compulsion For Capital, Akira Milligan

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project will examine the change in representations of blackness and black character in commercially successful hip hop music through music videos directed by Hype Williams from 1995 to 2005. This research will use a womanist approach to address the significant historical influence of storytelling in the black narrative and how the emerging concepts of hypermasculinity and the degradation of the black body have seemingly become the new normal. These concepts largely contribute to the negative stereotypical perceptions of black identity that keeps black bodies marginalized because there is little diversity in the public representations of blackness while there exists …

Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

On a campus where women make up a majority of the student population, it is especially important that female voices are heard and given a platform on which they can control their own narrative. I wanted to give those female-identifying voices that platform. I conducted a series of interviews to examine how college-aged female-identifying students feel about their identity and how they construct that identity within the climate of the JMU community. I was particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and ability. I asked each person to share their stories of times when they …

My Black Is Radical And Sensual: White Privilege And The Policing Of Black Women’S Body On Instagram, Alexis M. Franklin

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project argues that the overarching idea of white supremacy as well as Black pleasure politics disportionately alienates Black women from having the same freedom online as white women. In particular, this project analyzes the public commentary on two parallel sets of Instagram images, one of Beyonce and another of Kim Kardashian, as well as those of white women using the slutwalk hashtag and images of Black women who do not use the hashtag.

Connecting Beyond The Circle: A Restorative Approach In Co-Creating A Safe Space For Social Justice Education At Utec, Nikki F. Pelonia

Capstone Collection

“Social justice is both a process and a goal. The goal of social justice education is full and equal participation of all groups in a community that is [co-created] to meet the members’ needs. Social justice includes a vision of a community that is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure” (Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 2007, p. 1). In the process, one is used to going straight to issues of social justice before connecting by building trusts and relationships. This Course-Linked Capstone in Training focuses on SIT Graduate Institute coursework from Training Design in Experiential Learning …

Fandom, Racism, And The Myth Of Diversity In The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ashley S. Richardson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is currently one of the most commercially successful entertainment brands in American popular culture, with a range of film franchises and television series under its banner. Although the brand maintains its popularity with various demographics, the casting choices in Doctor Strange (2017) generated controversy among Marvel fans and critics alike for excluding people of color or reducing them to villains and sidekicks. This thesis examines the online commentary surrounding the casting and marketing of Doctor Strange to evaluate how social media users on Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter come to understand race and gender through the Marvel …

A Case For Empathy: Immigration In Spanish Contemporary Media, Music, Film, And Novels, Constantin C. Icleanu

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes the representations of immigrants from North Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe in Spain. As engaged scholarship, it seeks to better the portrayal of immigrants in the mass media through the study of literature, film, and music about immigration spanning from the year 2000 to 2016. Because misconceptions continue to propagate in the media, this dissertation works to counteract anti-immigrant, xenophobic representations as well as balance out overly positive and orientalized portrayal of immigrants with a call to recognize immigrants as human beings who deserve the same respect, dignity, and rights as any other citizen.

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The Reflection And Reification Of Racialized Language In Popular Media, Kelly E. Wright

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This work highlights specific lexical items that have become racialized in specific contextual applications and tests how these words are cognitively processed. This work presents the results of a visual world (Huettig et al 2011) eye-tracking study designed to determine the perception and application of racialized (Coates 2011) adjectives. To objectively select the racialized adjectives used, I developed a corpus comprised of popular media sources, designed specifically to suit my research question. I collected publications from digital media sources such as Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and Fortune by scraping articles featuring specific search terms from their websites. This experiment seeks …