African American Studies Commons^™

Race Youth In Twentieth-Century American Literature And Culture, Claire E. Lenviel

Theses and Dissertations--English

Race Youth in Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture argues for the centrality of black youth, both real and literary, to the trajectories of African American literature and its repudiation of white supremacy. Drawing on research into the rise of the adolescent and teenager as distinct social categories, I argue that age-based subjectivity should inform how we read race-based subjectivity. My first chapter explores how early twentieth-century black periodicals push back against white supremacist theories of human development in an explicit appeal to what I call “race youth,” the children and adolescents who would take up the mantle of racial uplift. …

Employment Discrimination: An Efficacy Study Of African American Inequities In The California Utility Sector, Victor Baker

Doctoral Dissertations

Employment Discrimination: An Efficacy Study of African American Inequities in the California Utility SectorThe economic legislation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was designed a vigorous tool of law to address employment discrimination of African Americans and remedy economic disparity that unfavored African Americans. The energy utility industry served as the first Supreme Court defendant and loser of a Title VII employment discrimination challenge by a Black workforce. As a result, energy utility companies have served as the face of resistance to fair employment for African Americans despite the liberal popularity of diversity management programs. Prior …

Sonic Femininity: The Ronettes' Transgressive Gender Performance, Hilarie Ashton

Publications and Research

Iconic sixties girl group the Ronettes are frequently (and justly) celebrated for anchoring the Wall of Sound and inspiring the Beatles, but in their own right, they transgressed social, gendered expectations in revolutionary ways. Framed by a notion I call the sonic feminine, a recuperative theoretical space for the revolutionarily transgressive work of female and femme artists, I argue that the Ronettes, and lead singer Ronnie Spector in particular, enacted a kind of cultural rebellion: they crafted their images to made-up heights that tease the boundaries of drag across the spaces of the stage, the recording studio, the bathroom, and …

Religious Racial Socialization: The Approach Of A Black Pastor At An Historic Black Baptist Church In Orange County, California, Shandell S. Maxwell

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This case study explored and developed the religious racial socialization (RRS) approach of a Black Baptist pastor in Orange County, California. The aim was to assess how the pastor’s direct messages about race influenced and transformed members’ racial and social views and actions and examined the message alignment between what the pastor said and what church members and the leadership team heard. This study took a multimethod exploratory approach, examining multiple sources of data gathered from a Likert scale members’ survey, leadership team interviews, and archival materials. To support triangulation of the data, a word query and emergent thematic analysis …

Black Grocers, Black Activism, And The Spaces In Between: Black Grocery Stores During The Mississippi Freedom Struggle Movement, Keon Ahmad Burns

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the role of Black-owned grocery stores and their owners during the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Movement. The thesis highlights four Black grocery store owners, and the impact they had on the movement. Grocery stores played a vital role and were often sites of contestants. Black-owned grocery stores served as meeting spaces for Black activism, targets of White domestic terrorism, and safe havens for Black Mississippians. These spaces provided a space for political agency, leisure, and safety. Likewise, this thesis centers Black grocery store owners as fundamental to the progress of the movement. It explores an array of ways …

Where Am I?: The Absence Of The Black Male From The E-Suite, Brian Bedford

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

According to current U.S. labor statistics, Black male executives are underrepresented in every major industry in the United States. Common impediments preventing Black males from occupying executive positions include workplace white supremacy, biculturalism, repressive structures, and disparate career development. Using critical race theory as a framework, this basic qualitative study investigated the experiences of eight male executives, five Black and three white, from various industries to understand their perceptions and perspectives on race and racism, and examined their workplace lived experiences to study why there are not more Black males in the e-suite. Moreover, strategies to increase Black male representation …

Songs For High Voice: An Annotated Guide To African Romances, Op. 17 By Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Makeda Danielle Hampton

Theses and Dissertations--Music

African Romances, Op. 17, composed in 1897 by African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), is a collection of seven songs for high voice that is uniquely both African and American. The lyrics of this song cycle were first published in the book Majors and Minors, a collection of poems published in 1895 by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).

An analysis of resources supports that academic discourse in Black vocal music has been underrepresented due to the absence of centralized information, such as published scores, recorded materials, catalogs, and guides for study and performance. While in depth research focusing on the art …

Treatment Barriers Confronted By African American Women In Past Abusive Relationships, Akhirah Shahidah Lewis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a widespread problem that impacts 5.3 million women annually in the United States, and African American women experience IPV at a 35% rate higher than Caucasian women and 2.5 times higher than other races. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine the treatment barriers confronted by African American women in past abusive relationships. This research addressed the extent to which IPV affected African American women regarding the challenges resulting from IPV, the relevant impacts, and the treatment barriers. The ecological systems theory developed by Bronfenbrenner in 1979 was used as the theoretical …

Qualitative Examination Of Noncustodial African American Fathers' Involvement In Their Children's Education, Christy Ann Wallace

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractParent involvement in children's school experience has been shown to be important to academic success. Although African American parents approach their parenting in culturally unique ways, these have not been adequately explored or described. Many African American children grow up in a household with a single mother and an involved but nonresident father; the purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of these fathers with their grade school children's schools and education. Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory underpinned the research. Using a qualitative phenomenological design, data was collected from a sample of 10 nonresident African American fathers using …

College Persistence And Fictive Kinship Of African American Male Alumni From A Historically Black University, Sandra Marie Riley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractCollege persistence to degree completion by African American males remains a problem in higher education with little known about the supportive experiences of alumni from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand the role fictive kin relationships played in the persistence and degree completion by African American male alumni from HBCUs. Brooks and Allen’s concept of fictive kin relationships and Tinto’s persistence theory in higher education were the framework to explore how African American male alumni from an HBCU characterized the role fictive kin relationships played in their college persistence to …

African American, Adult Men Reared By Their Single, African American, Custodial Fathers, Christopher Eugene Joe

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A vast number of researchers have studied the impact that African American father absence has on the developmental outcomes of African American, male children. Others have noted the steady increase of single, African American, custodial fathers and have suggested African American, male children who grow up in these households are likely to experience positive developmental outcomes. However, their research stopped short of examining how this unique family structure impacted child development from the son’s perspective. The purpose of this qualitative study was to provide an understanding of how the childhood well-being of sons was affected by growing up with a …

Soul Liberation: Black Christian Intellectual Engagement With Black Power, Jemar Tisby

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the Civil Rights movement, Black Christians figured prominently as clergy, leaders, and foot soldiers in the struggle. As a result, the presence of Black Christians during this phase of the Black activism is well-documented by historians. During the Black Power era, however, scholars tend to overlook the ongoing presence and significance of Black Christians in the movement. Soul Liberation corrects this omission by studying Black Christian engagement during the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

World Wide Wake: A Look Into Digital Wake Work In Response To The Murder Of Breonna Taylor, Kalyn T. Coghill

Graduate Research Posters

In Christina Sharpe's, In the Wake, she refers to "wake work" as conscious work. Wake work makes a conscious and intentional effort to celebrate one's life as they are passing and after they have transitioned on. Wake work includes grief, sadness, reminiscing, happiness, laughter, and many more emotions. We think of wake work happening in the physical, but I want to look at how weight work exists in the digital. This paper will discuss how wake work is done in digital spaces such as social media platforms. I will also be looking at how social movements such as black …

Race And Labor In Saint Domingue: "Let Us Die Rather Than Fail To Keep This Vow", Monet Massac

Scripps Senior Theses

My thesis explores the development of racial capitalism in Saint Domingue, today’s Haiti, and how different sectors of colonial society handled and worked with the tools they were given by their oppressors. By “tools,” I mean the ideology of race that devalues and degrades Blackness and gives value to whiteness. Though I am using terms of race, it is impossible to separate racial politics from economics. The scope of my thesis is within the early modern period starting with European and specifically French travel writers from the 1500s on until right after the Haitian Revolution. The investigation is relatively chronological …

A Musical Analysis Of William Grant Still's Songs Of Separation: The Chamber Arrangement, Michael Preacely

Theses and Dissertations--Music

William Grant Still was given the title “The Dean of African American Music” because of the many firsts he accomplished as an African American musician in the early twentieth century. He is known for fusing his African American musical tradition of Jazz and blues with the classical European musical tradition. This study explores one of Still’s most famous song cycles, “Songs of Separation,” in the arrangement for string quartet, voice, and piano. This document considers the instrumentation of the string quartet arrangement and how Still uses the instrumentation to enhance the character OF the poetry. This document also provides a …

Ascension To The Presidency: A Narrative Inquiry Of African American Women, Konya Monique Sledge

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This narrative inquiry study examined the lived experiences of African American women serving as community college administrators to gain perspectives on how they overcame obstacles to career advancement and strategies used to achieve the presidency. Narrative inquiry is used to restory field texts, is applied to underscore their lived experiences, and establishes a timeline detailing their early career experiences. Only one president sought to lead a community college; all others arrived at the presidency by non-traditional paths. Three themes emerged from responses provided by presidents during their interviews and are as follows: (a) nontraditional pathway to presidency; (b) heightened awareness …

Henry Adams: An Education In Autobiography, Marcellus Richie

Dissertations and Theses

This essay will begin by breaking down Henry Adams’s starting sentence in his autobiography word by word, piece by piece – pondering its meanings and permutations in the context of subsequent chapters of this iconic memoir. The essay will then consider whether Adams’s Education should still be regarded as a classic of American autobiography or seen merely as an irrelevant and out-of-date artifact. In a nation radically transformed since Adams’s time, does the book still deserve its high flung reputation? In other words, which of the images cited above is most relevant to The Education: an image of optimistic youth …

The Space Between “Seen” And “Unseen:” Queer People And The 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance, Claudia R. Campanella

Dissertations and Theses

In November 1926, a group of Black artists, writers, and activists created the first and only edition of Fire!!, edited by novelist Wallace Thurman. Fire!! was created by a younger generation of New Negroes and “devoted to the younger Negro artists” who dissented from the mainstream ideas of the New Negro Movement and used the magazine to spread their own views on the 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance. Fire!! and other texts speaking to this dissent against a Black intellectual middle class image of the movement will be studied in reference to showcasing the multi-faceted elements of the movement touching …

Reimagining The Black Body Through Portraiture: Interpreting The Functional And Societal Roles Of Photography And The Reconstructive Power Of Camera Technology And Photographic Images For African American Self Image, Robert Cain

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis addresses the multiple ways in which the medium of photography, and specifically the portrait photograph, enabled African Americans to visually contest degrading portrayals of blackness and reclaim stolen agency in producing depictions of self throughout the media and popular culture. The societal reverberations of camera technology on the emergence of black photographers like Richard Samuel Roberts, James VanDerZee, and Gordon Parks are analyzed, and the images taken by these artists are read against a history of racist stereotypes, reconsidered for their aesthetic contributions to the art world, and interpreted within the tradition of African American photography. A brief …

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

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.