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Sensing Brownness: On Racialization, Perception, And Method, Amber Jamilla Musser

Publications and Research

Maureen Catbagan’s Dark Matter (2020) photography series invites us into sensing brownness. In these images of museum passages and stairwells, silhouettes of museum guards, and evocative shadows, Catbagan presents the landscape of the museum. However, this may not be immediately recognizable because the photographs draw focus to the parts of museums to which we rarely pay attention. In particular, Catbagan’s attention to the presence of guards allows us to perceive dynamics of racialized and gendered labor and laborers who, in an echo of their architectural focus on minor, peripheral spaces and shadows, hover between the underrecognized and oft-neglected, thereby allowing …

What We Mean When We Say "Religion": The Q'Ero Migrants Of Cusco, Peru, Autumn J. Delong, Mirtha Irco

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

This article is based upon ethnographic research conducted with Q’ero Indigenous migrants living in Cusco, Peru in the fall of 2018. The Q’ero community originates from the village of Paucartambo and the surrounding areas, about a three days’ trek northeast of the city. These stories collected from the migrants emphasize the centrality of their spirituality and worldview in defining their sense of identity apart from that of greater society. In their rituals, these migrants draw upon an experience of the sacred which is manifest through performance, discipline, and practice – often more so than through belief, faith, or intellectualism. Based …

Diam's: The Politics Of Autobiography And Avatarhood In The French Republic, Taryn Marcelino

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

Diam’s is a French female rapper otherwise known as Mélanie Georgiades who was prominent in France’s music scene from 1999 up until 2010 when she retreated to a small village in the French countryside. Her claim to fame was her anti-racist lyrics but what grabbed the media’s attention was her reappearance in the public sphere wearing a veil. In this article, I trace her career from her lyrics, music videos, and finally to her autobiographies which she published during her retirement from music. By following her work, I analyze the avatars of Diam’s and Mélanie to portray her journey from …

‘Could The Subaltern Speak?’ Patriarchy And Gender-Based Violence In Ben Okri’S Dangerous Love, Francis Etsè Awitor

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

In a patriarchal society, women are, on the most part, the least representative in socio-political and economic spheres. They are frequently considered as second-class citizens, and live in the shadow of their male counterparts. They are portrayed as commodities, objects that satisfy men’s needs while being used as sex toys, cooks, servants, housewives and housemaids. They face various forms of violence and abuse as far as they are seen as sub-humans. In a society trapped in a web of traditional, cultural and religious beliefs, women’s plights and sufferings are often overlooked and ignored. By utilizing a feminist lens, the violation …

Women In Bujuur Society: Marriage, Imah-Itu And Ethnic Lineage, Elija Chara

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

The role of women in Bujuur social identity is often overlooked by emphasizing the general patrilocal and patrilineal customs. Traditional Bujuur society was characterized by ambilineage as well as matrilocality whereby women contributed to the making and remaking of Bujuur identity. This paper explores two spaces within the theme of marriage: i) Imah-Itu (the residence of a husband at his wife’s house) and ii) children of mixed marriages identifying with the mother’s Bujuur ethnicity. The objective is to critique the everyday emphasis on patriarchy, patrilineality and patrilocalism among the Bujuur, all of which are in contrast to historical traditions. A …

“Baby Donato” In Abruzzo (Italy): From A Mother’S Veneration To Popular Devotion, Lia Giancristofaro

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

The article considers a cult that developed and still thrives in a small Abruzzo town in the years between the two world wars. During these decades, the mummified body of a baby became the object of worship and devotional practices. The epileptic Baby Donato died and after few months his body was given to the Sanctuary of St Donatus in Celenza sul Trigno. St Donatus is the saint who protects epileptics and in Italian Catholicism is therefore the master of disease. The name Donato means ‘given’ and the ailment (epilepsy) is given by the saint to his subjects in exchange …

Editor's Note, Enaya Othman

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

No abstract provided.

2022 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2022 IGGAD Conference: Who Owns This? Communities, Heritage, and Preservation.

Committed To The Fragment: Feminist Literature And The Promise Of Wellness, Lynne Beckenstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“I have never been able to blind myself” to the cruelty of a world that “destroys its own young in passing…out of not noticing or caring about the destruction,” Audre Lorde tells us in her 1980 “mythobiography” Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. This quality, Lorde says, “according to one popular definition of mental health, makes me mentally unhealthy.” In rejecting psychological self-possession as a sign of wellness, this passage also rejects it as one of sovereignty’s conditions. At the time of Lorde’s writing, this version of sovereignty already dominated the landscape of therapeutic culture in the United States, …

Control, Allegiance, And Shame In Male Qing Dynasty Hairstyles, Carolle Pinkerton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is about the politicization of hairstyles in imperial China. They indicated conformity with social norms, or rebellion against them. This was especially true under the country’s last dynasty. The Manchu conquerors imposed their own hairstyle, the queue, on their Han Chinese subjects to make their rule palpable to China’s illiterate millions. “Hair martyrs” who refused to accept this “barbarous” hairstyle were ruthlessly eliminated. The Manchus had feared assimilation into the much larger Han population. But the introduction of one uniform male hair style for both Manchus and Han blurred the lines between the two groups. In this way …

“She Too ‘Omanish’”: Young Black Women’S Sexuality And Reproductive Justice In Bluefields, Nicaragua, Ishan Elizabeth Gordon-Ugarte

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Most never-married young “Creole” (Afro-Caribbean) women in Bluefields, Nicaragua are raised in fundamentalist Protestant families and institutions that emphasize sexual abstinence before marriage. In this context, abstinence is required to maintain social standing and “respectability.” Nevertheless, women in Bluefields, the administrative center of Caribbean Nicaragua, exhibit what Creoles themselves understand to be high rates of sexuality and pregnancy among post-menarche unmarried teenaged women (USAID, 2012; Mitchell et al. 2015). Such young women’s pregnancies occur at an important developmental stage of their lives and have long been associated by social scientists with adverse social, emotional, and health situations. These scholars have …

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s …

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Pre-Event Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s …

Materialising Grief: The Reclamation Of Loss In Kamila Shamsie’S Home Fire, Gabriella Pishotti

Graduate Student Scholarship

Over recent decades, Sophocles’ Antigone has become widely adapted within postcolonial contexts, the tragedy’s collapsing of the boundaries between the home, nation, and law positioning it as a useful text for offering counter-discourses to a state’s ideas of justice. Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire is one such adaptation that explores the themes of Antigone through the experiences of one British Muslim family. Drawing from Judith Butler’s scholarship on grievability and Sara Ahmed’s work on the politics of emotion, this article examines how Muslim lives are made abject by Britain’s post-9/11 Islamophobic politics and media. It then examines how Home Fire’s characters …

Falling Through The Cracks: Black And South Asian Muslim Survival And Solidarity, Sarah Babar

Copley Library Undergraduate Research Awards

Within the fractured systems and institutions that plague the US, two groups in particular have fallen through the cracks: Black and South Asian Muslims. According to a 2015 report published by human rights organization Muslim Anti Racism Collaborative, over 3.4 million Muslims currently live in the United States. Black Muslims and South Asian Muslims constitute about 20% and 60% of that population, respectively; however, both groups are disregarded and misrepresented in US discourse and media. In 1619, Black Muslim slaves were the first to bring Islam to the US and played a foundational role in the development of Islam in …

Italian Studies In Southern Africa, Vol. 35 No. 1 (2022): Diversity, Decolonisation, And Italian Studies, Simone Brioni Dr., Marie Orton, Graziella Parati, Gaoheng Zhang

Department of English Faculty Publications

This special issue explores the intersections of diversity and decolonisation within the field of Italian Studies. By engaging with postcolonial theory, migration, and critical race studies, the contributors reframe traditional narratives of Italian culture and history. The issue investigates the legacies of colonialism, the experiences of racialized communities in Italy, and the role of Italian Studies in fostering inclusive and equitable academic practices. Through interdisciplinary approaches, the essays call for a critical re-evaluation of the field, advocating for a more diverse, decolonial, and globally conscious understanding of Italy's past and present.

Textiled Narratives: Branding, Consumption, And Mexican American Identity At The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Andrew Michael Gordus

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

The NaCo apparel company out of Tijuana, Mexico, created a unique line of clothing and accessories in the late 1990s and early 2000s. With its success in Mexico, the brand chose to extend its reach into the lucrative US market. The company's focus on bicultural and binational images seemed a natural fit for a growing Latinx presence in the US. An analysis of the company's successes and failures in the new market highlights the continued importance of borders as separators of visual economies rooted in national histories and imaginations. Additionally, their experience reveals the complexities within Latinx communities that can …

The Peacock Dress: The Language Of British Imperialism In India, 1899-1905, Rebecca Onken

Copley Library Undergraduate Research Awards

Imperialism exists in tandem with colonialism. Empires seek out colonies for their resources so they can take the wealth in those countries for their own. Rarely do empires admit this, so they require a language with which to reframe their practices. The British Raj in India exemplifies this. A narrative of exploitation is at first hard to discern, because while the British drained India of its resources and broke down its industries, they appreciated Indian art and objects too, to the point of clothing themselves in Indian textiles, as in the case of the titular Peacock dress. But this appreciation …

Jemimas, Jockeys, And Jolly Banks: The Racial Discourse Of Black Collectibles, Conrad Pruitt

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Over the last thirty years, an industry in black racist memorabilia has resurged. Bolstered by online commerce, social media trade, and a robust reproduction market, racist collectibles continue to circulate despite their functional obsolescence or presumed incongruity with current views of race. Many of these objects originated in the late nineteenth century, where the emergence of black citizenship was seen as a threat to a racial caste structure that ensured white supremacy. Following the impetus for supremacy that defined the Jim Crow era, the collectibles sought to crystallize conceptions of inherent black inferiority. The presumption that these originary conditions and …

An Exploratory Analysis Of How Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, And Patrisse Cullors Radicalized The Meaning And Practice Of Self-Care, Melanie Marie Lindsay

CGU Theses & Dissertations

My dissertation, “An Exploratory Analysis of How Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, and Patrisse Cullors Radicalized the Meaning and Practice of Self-Care”, hypothesizes that we can conceive a practice of self-care using an abolitionist lens to examine the writings and performances of three Black feminists Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, and Patrisse Cullors. Abolitionist self-care is a response to the political structures that directly affect marginalized communities, and it evaluates the numerous ways that Black women have used their voice to challenge systems of oppression. If we examine their thinking as expressed through their poetry, their performances (including activism), and their self-life-writing, …

Representing The Ali'i And Monarchy: Dress, Diplomacy, And Featherwork In Hawai'i, Tess Anderson

Scripps Senior Theses

When Native Hawaiians and haole (foreigners) first met, both participants belonged to fashion systems unknown to the other, composed of different materials, styles, tastes, standards, and construction techniques. As the outside world was introduced to the cultural heritage of Hawaiian hulu manu (featherwork), kūkaulani (chiefly fashion), and European skewed conceptions of Hawaiian indigeneity; the ali‘i (chiefs) and kama‘āina (commoners) received and adapted to incoming materials, technologies, and information. When these encounters transitioned into “prolonged contact” and settlement, dress and adornment proliferated in new ways. Analyzing the case studies of historic pā‘ū, holokū, ‘ahu'ula, and military uniforms shows the significance of …

Mitakuye Oyasin : Pedagogy And Design In Composition I, Jody Lee Rust

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mitakuye Oyasin, an Oceti Sakowin (Lakota/Nakota/Dakota) phrase that translates as “All My Relations,” is a philosophy that means all things created on earth and in the universe are related and inhabit a shared space. Because all things are related and share space, they all have a purpose and a responsibility to discover and serve that purpose to ensure all of our relatives thrive in our shared space. This relational thinking influences the way the Oceti Sakowin interact with the world, including the way they teach. In this thesis, I analyze the way composition theories shape the curriculum and pedagogy of …

Facultas Marginem: Assessing Disability Data And Public Aau Universities’ Affirmative Action Plans For Systemic Barriers Facing Faculty With Disabilities, Joseph Carlton Barry

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

This dissertation contributes to education equity scholarship produced by academics seeking to develop understandings of disability, Persons with Disabilities (PWD), and how both are situated amongst faculty in institutions of higher education. As such, this dissertation centers on a study of public US universities belonging to the Association of American Universities (AAU). This study looks for institutional level associations between respective rates by which college and university faculty with disabilities (FWD) are employed, certain aspects of disability policy drawn from each institution’s 2020 Affirmative Action Plans (AAP), and various other instances of empirical disability data (EDD).

While this study contributes …

Pray And Play: The Impact Of Fellowship Of Christian Athletes Among Di African American Collegiate Football Players In Kentucky, Rasheed Flowers

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Participation in athletics provides student-athletes with opportunities to further themselves outside of athletics through academic assistance, educational opportunities and experiences, physical wellness, and personal/professional development. One often overlooked portion of this holistic development is spiritual development. As demonstrated in the name student-athlete, it implies a dual identity. Few student-athletes navigate multiple identities and a myriad of additional challenges in their collegiate journey than African American football student-athletes (AAFSAs). Spiritual development is vital for student-athletes; the literature validates that student-athletes growing in their faith may be better equipped to navigate the tension of multiple identity roles and cope with various circumstances. …

Intimate Partner Violence In Women Of African American And African Cultures, Patricia Brooks

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a prevalent social problem that results in a high number of deaths, psychological trauma, and physical mutilation. Previous research showed African American women as having elevated rates of intimate partner violence attributable to a lack of representation in epidemiological studies due to low socioeconomic status and cultural norms. In Central and West Africa, IPV is associated with childhood marriages, lack of education, cultural norms, and socioeconomic status. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences and cultural views of both African American and African women and how they use these cultural …

Black Parent Advocacy And Educational Success: Lessons Learned On The Use Of Voice And Engagement, Mark Mcmillian

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

“The opportunity is there, this is what I think of when I think of role models, I think of my experience” (Anthony—a participant in this study—commenting on the effectiveness of advocating for his child). Black children encounter racism in American schools and parents need to advocate for them. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how Black parents developed and used their voice to advocate for their children in a predominantly White educational system with a history of racially disparate outcomes. Particularly, this study drew on the experiences of 15 participants, two men—one was a grandfather—and 13 women, …

Afroam: A Virtual Film Production Group, Bill Taylor Jr.

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Because of the gatekeeping practices of the Hollywood film industry, and the high cost of both filmmaking and distribution in general, Afro-American filmmakers have struggled to produce films with “global reach.” This study visits the possibility of Afro-American filmmakers using alternative technologies and infrastructures to produce high-quality films, thereby bypassing the high cost and exclusionary practices of Hollywood studios. Using new 21st-century digital technology, this study involved the creation of a small geographically dispersed virtual film production team. The study’s foundational framework was a constructivist qualitative research paradigm, using Action Research, and supported by 24 months of triangulated data from …

Archiving Bilingual Latin@ Oral Histories, Elena Foulis, Brandon D’Souza

Spanish Faculty Publications (Archived)

Over the past ten years, digital archives documenting underrepresented communities have been rising. For example, oral and print historical projects about minoritized communities and ethnic cultural heritage centers have existed for decades (Daniel, 2010), yet few are fully accessible online. The increased presence of these types of archives points not only to the need to document the histories of these communities but also to the interest in making this work accessible to all. There is an urgency in documenting, archiving, and curating histories—audio, print, video, and other ephemera—because minoritized communities have consistently faced exclusion from majority historical documents. As precarious …

Margaret Cantu-Sanchez, Megan Angelo, Elizabeth Perez

Latinx Civil Rights

Dr. Margaret Cantu-Sanchez discusses her experience with education starting as early as elementary school all the way up until she received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She describes the obstacles she faced throughout this experience and acknowledges the privileges that helped her along the way. Dr. Cantu-Sanchez offers a unique perspective on higher education for Latinx communities as she is now a professor at her alma mater, St. Mary’s University, which is a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). She also plays an important role in cultivating the Mexican American Studies program at this university and …

Comic Books, Satire, And The American Police State: Lessons From The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, Jamie Michaels

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In the spirit of the #DefundThePolice and #BlackLivesMatter movements, protestors in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) declared sovereignty over 5½ city blocks. Emboldened by the potential for mass mobilization enabled by the COVID-19 pandemic protestors attempted to establish a racially egalitarian society that would exist without the police, the traditional enforcement mechanism of the white supremacist American state.

This paper explores how Alex Graham’s Dog Biscuits (2021) and Simon Hanselmann’s, Crisis Zone (2021) portray the ways CHAZ protestors utilized absurdity in the face of extreme violence to enact indiffernation—a unique affect comprised of indifference and determination. This affect …