Africana Studies Commons^™

Bedeviled Beauty: My Journey Through White American Theater Institutions, J'Aila C. Price

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Game console: Oculus Quest

World: American Theater Institutions

Player: Minority

Place: United States

Level: “Ain’t no way.”

This thesis explores the contrast between the Westernized philosophies ingrained in my education and my identity as a Black female artist. It sheds light on the difficulties of pursuing higher education in the arts and the gaps that arise from limited exposure to culturally diverse Black resources, revealing the systemic issues in Western performance education. The paper also discusses the insights gained from my journey as a Black female artist, focusing on my thesis performance of Blood at the Root, which is …

Rejection, Creation, And Abolitionist Futures: Sustaining Ecosystems Of Care Under Neoliberal Violence 1980-Present, Maya Phelps

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

The enforcement of the child welfare system through policies, funding practices, and ideologies is a national investment in the nuclear family as a critical social institution to the United States (US); this investment communicates to the broader population that conforming to this heteropatriarchal, white supremacist conception of family provides protection from state intervention to those who conform. My project interrogates child welfare’s enforcement of normative families, and the resistance from Black family formations and kinship based on their social position and its relation to power. Focusing on the period between 1980 and the present, I examine the ways Black family …

A Quartet Of Consequence: Randolph, Rustin, Baker & Levison & The Movement They Made, Jonathan Klein

Graduate Masters Theses

The historiography of the civil rights movement has been dominated by a debate over the proper placement of the historian’s lens. Should it provide a top/down view concentrating on high profile leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., or should it have a bottom/up focus that zeroes in on courageous grassroots leaders? Some historians have argued for a both/and approach with perspective on both the leaders at the top and at the bottom and how they interacted. What has been missing from this debate is the decisive impact made by networks of leaders who set aside their own narrow interests to …

The Author And Apartheid: Building Pro-Blackness At Bgsu Through James Baldwin And The Anti-Apartheid Movement, Noah C. Fitch

Honors Projects

The stories of anti-apartheid and James Baldwin at BGSU provides a basis for a building of pro-Blackness in the on-campus community. Through the contextualization and narrative building through a historical sociological framework, these two events show the extent of activism in the 1970s and 1980s rather than the traditional narrative that is discussed. By expanding that narrative, it also expands the narrative surrounding the history not just of BGSU, but the way universities frame their own histories. Additionally, these events take place in the era when the transition from looking at Civil Rights to Human Rights is more prevalent and …

Shaky Foundations: Cultural Classifications In Museum Collections Management Systems And The Endurance Of Colonial-Era Terminology, Carlee S. Forbes, Erica P. Jones

Artl@s Bulletin

This article uses two musical instruments with attached ancestral remains and labeled as “Asante” from the Fowler Museum at UCLA to consider effects of style-based cultural classifications that appear in museum databases today. We highlight the sway of past classifications over our current understanding of objects that is prolonged by the problem of confirmation-bias in museum collections management systems. We then indicate how working across disciplines stimulated a more nuanced understanding about the complexities of artistic styles for musical instruments with attached human remains in the Akan-speaking region of West Africa.

Cet article étudie deux instruments de musique incorporant des …

What Does It Mean To Keep Kissing-Close To The Evidence, And Why Might It Matter?, Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi, Constantine Petridis

Artl@s Bulletin

African art specialists often lack detailed information to assess the original meanings, uses, and contexts of so-called historical or traditional arts of Africa, and they rely on indirect evidence to interpret the works. Thus, claims about African arts often reflect speculation rather than irrefutable details. When specific documentation for an object does exist, the circumstances of its creation require careful evaluation as well. The assessment of the quality and reliability of any claim is of particular importance in attempts to determine an object’s place of origin in the ongoing debates about restitution.

U.S. Government Agency Podcasts, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Presents podcasts from U.S. Government agencies which can be discovered through the U.S. Government Publishing Office's Catalog of Government Publications. Agencies whose podcasts are presented include the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Peace Corps, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Government Accountability Office (GAO), National Park Service, Department of Justice, Federal Reserve System, and U.S. Naval War College.

Cinema, Black Suffering, And Theodicy: Modern God, Terry Lindvall

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Shayne Lee, Cinema, Black Suffering, and Theodicy: Modern God (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022).

A Performative Model For Conducting Critical Race Analysis: Josephine Baker, Modern Dance, And Utilizing Narrative To Transform Legal Doctrine, Patrick C. Brayer

Faculty Works

This article proposes a performative model for analyzing the relationship between race and law by integrating narrative, modern dance, and performance as interpretive tools. Focusing on Josephine Baker’s activism and her 1952 return to St. Louis, the paper demonstrates how storytelling and artistic expression can expand legal scholarship and transform understandings of racial injustice. By bridging legal studies with performance, African American history, and cultural analysis, the work illustrates how embodied expression provides new pathways for confronting structural racism, transgenerational trauma, and the pursuit of social justice.

The Breakbeat Poets: Translocal Placemaking In The Contemporary Midwestern Lyric, Andy Oler

Publications

In the introduction to the Haymarket Books collection The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015), co-editor Kevin Coval asserts that the anthologized poems are not simply influenced by hip-hop; “these poems are hip-hop.”¹ The anthology’s focus on a genre, a cultural phenomenon, might seem like an odd fit for a special issue on placemaking. Its national frame might seem too expansive for the study of regionalism (though there is a history, established by James Shortridge, of conflating the Midwest with the nation).² But The BreakBeat Poets is also attentive to more precise versions …

Make It Funky For Me: Black British Women’S Explorations Of Britishness, Womanhood, And Artistry Through 2000s Music, Monique Charles

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

2000s Britain was an interesting and expansive time musically for Black Britain (Bradley 2013), as underground music gained traction in mainstream spaces. This article examines the context in which Black British women were able to cross over into the British mainstream and explores how U.K. garage and U.K. funky artists expressed their creativity, autonomy, womanhood, Blackness, and Britishness. Female U.K. garage artists set a precedent in the creation of “new” diverse identities for Black British women artists, but artists in both underground and mainstream music scenes were also forced to contend with restrictive and harmful misogynoir.

Review Of For God And My Country: Catholic Leadership In Modern Uganda, John Ashworth

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Review Of After Genocide: Memory And Reconciliation In Rwanda, Selina Gallo-Cruz

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Review Of Mathare: An Urban Baston Of Anti-Oppression Struggle In Kenya, Mugo Patrick Mugo

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Book Discussion "Innovations In Peace And Security In Africa"

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Book Discussion "The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History Of The Cia And A Cold War Assassination"

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Review Of Water Management And Violent Conflict In East Africa: Scarcity And Security In Kenya And Uganda, Ken Conca

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

In Memory Of Bishop Paride Taban, Sara Ketelaar, Fr. Peter Mbaro, John Ashworth, Fr. Joseph G. Healey, Rosanne Fischer, William O’Keefe

The Journal of Social Encounters

The Journal of Social Encounters mourns the loss, and celebrates the life, of the much-loved Bishop Paride Taban. We thank our authors below for sharing their reflections on him. In his memory, we also re-print an essay about him by Alberto Eisman Torres, A Beacon of Hope in a Troubled Context: Sketches of the Life of Mons. Paride Taban, Shepherd and Bridge-builder, an essay in our special collection on Peace Bishops. I was blessed to know Bisop Taban, and would see him in Nairobi and in Minnesota. One of his associates was a student of mine at the Catholic …

Peace Bishop: Bishop Nicolas Djoma Lola -- Bishop Of Tshumbé, Stephen R. Hilbert

The Journal of Social Encounters

Fr. Nicolas Djomo Lola was appointed a bishop in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 1997 and immediately was thrust into a brutal war between Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire that lasted through 2003. That conflict exacerbated deadly ethnic conflicts in the eastern provinces of the Congo that continue to this day. Bishop Djomo, driven by his belief that Jesus Christ calls all people to build peace, and protect people from violence responded to this war and chaos in remarkable ways. He led a delegation of the Central Africa Bishops to advocate with the Presidents of Burundi, Rwanda and …

Relational Leadership And Governing: Somali Clan Cultural Leadership, Farhia Abdi

The Journal of Social Encounters

This research is focused on exploring the distinction between theories of leadership and more contemporary visions of relational leading. In order to do so, the specific case of traditional clan structure seen in the Somali state will be examined, and parallels between the two will be drawn. This paper argues that the old Somali tradition shares much in common with current writing on relational leadership (Uhl-Bien, 2006) and, therefore, can expand our understanding and support for a form of leadership that transcends traditional, individualist, hierarchical leadership. This argument will be supported by a detailed investigation into clan politics, leadership, and …