Digital Commons Network^™

Racial Capitalism In The Civil Courts, Tonya L. Brito, Kathryn A. Sabbeth, Jessica Steinberg, Lauren Sudeall

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Essay explores how civil courts function as sites of racial capitalism. The racial capitalism conceptual framework posits that capitalism requires racial inequality and relies on racialized systems of expropriation to produce capital. While often associated with traditional economic systems, racial capitalism applies equally to nonmarket settings, including civil courts.

The lens of racial capitalism enriches access to justice scholarship by explaining how and why state civil courts subordinate racialized groups and individuals. Civil cases are often framed as voluntary disputes among private parties, yet many racially and economically marginalized litigants enter the civil legal system involuntarily, and the state …

Culture And Fair Use, Michael Goodyear

Articles & Chapters

The intersections of race and copyright have been underexamined in legal scholarship, despite repeated calls for further scrutiny. The scholarship has so far focused primarily on identifying where copyright has fallen short in protecting the creative works of artists of color. This Article, instead, hopes to offer one viable solution for creating more inclusivity of different cultures in copyright: the approval of cultural adaptations under fair use.
Cultural adaptations—the transforming of preexisting works to reflect the cultural and social mores and norms of a different group—would appear on first glance to be prohibited as derivative works, which, under the Copyright …

Mapping Racial Capitalism: Implications For Law, Carmen G. Gonzalez, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

The theory of racial capitalism offers insights into the relationship between class and race, providing both a structural and a historical account of the ways in which the two are linked in the global economy. Law plays an important role in this. This article sketches what we believe are two key structural features of racial capitalism: profit-making and race-making for the purpose of accumulating wealth and power. We understand profit-making as the extraction of surplus value or profits through processes of exploitation, expropriation, and expulsion, which are grounded in a politics of race-making. We understand race-making as including racial stratification, …

“Where Did Your Christ Come From”? Exploring The Significance And Prevalence Of The White Jesus Phenomenon Among Black Baptist Women And Men, Stephanie Marshelle House-Niamke

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Berger's theory of religion and world construction fails to consider the critical issue of power and who is allowed to construct their own reality and thus, does not adequately capture the experience of Black Christians and the Black religious experience. I use White Jesus as a case study to analyze this process. Though the White Jesus phenomenon has been more readily explored in theological and historical fields, very little sociological research discusses this phenomenon. I argue that a Europeanized Jesus has had harmful sociocultural effects on Black Christians and Black people, in the form of cultural trauma. Yet, the White …

Anti-Racist Pedagogy: A Practical Means Of Building Bonds Between Marginalized Students And Instructors In The Composition Classroom, Santa-Victoria Pérez

English (MA) Theses

Framed by the existing scholarship in anti-racist pedagogy, this thesis is inspired by Charise Pimentel and Octavio Pimentel’s dream of building coalitions with marginalized students, Steven Alvarez’s framework for academic biliteracy, and Marcos del Hierro’s advocacy for incorporating discussions about contentious social issues in the classroom. This research draws mainly from works by rhetoricians and compositionists of color who report that working through and pushing past the discomfort and tensions of politically charged topics in the classroom are crucial for an anti-racist writing program (Prendergast, 1998; Villanueva, 1999; Clary-Lemon, 2009; Inoue, 2015; García de Müeller and Ruiz, 2017). By reflecting …

The Inequitable Consequences Of School Disciplinary Policies On Black Girls In Ohio, Terry Husband, Shamaine Bertrand

Journal of Global Education and Research

Studies have examined the effects of school disciplinary policies and practices on Black boys. Much of this research highlights the degree to which many of these disciplinary policies and practices have affected Black boys in P-12 contexts in negative ways. A small and emerging body of scholarship has begun to investigate the effects of school discipline policies and practices in P-12 contexts on Black girls. The focus of this study was to investigate the effects of disciplinary policies on Black girls in comparison to girls from other races in the 15 largest school districts in Ohio. Drawing from recent out-of-school …

Overcoming The Covid-19 Pandemic For Dementia Research: Engaging Rural, Older, Racially And Ethnically Diverse Church Attendees In Remote Recruitment, Intervention And Assessment, Lisa Kirk Wiese, Ishan C. Williams, Nancy E. Schoenberg, James E. Galvin, Jennifer Lingler

Behavioral Science Faculty Publications

Background: Access to cognitive screening in rural underserved communities is limited and was further diminished during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined whether a telephone-based cognitive screening intervention would be effective in increasing ADRD knowledge, detecting the need for further cognitive evaluation, and making and tracking the results of referrals.

Method: Using a dependent t-test design, older, largely African American and Afro-Caribbean participants completed a brief educational intervention, pre/post AD knowledge measure, and cognitive screening.

Results: Sixty of 85 eligible individuals consented. Seventy-percent of the sample self-reported as African American, Haitian Creole, or Hispanic, and 75% were female, with an average …

The Real Me: Shared Technology’S Impact On Status From The Lens Of Positioning Theory, Christina Nishiyama, Michael E. Nussbaum, Michael S. Van Winkle

College of Education Faculty Research

Participation in collaborative learning environments has demonstrated significant learning advantages due to opportunities for group members to contribute to shared problem-solving processes, shared goals, and co-elaboration of knowledge. Furthermore, research has shown that higher levels of social perceptiveness are positively correlated with higher levels of group performance. However, collaboration is not always successful, sometimes exhibiting imbalances of power and status. In this study, positioning theory and interaction analysis were used to investigate (a) interactions in four racially and gender-mixed groups (of three university students each) working with technology and (b) their negotiated positions of power and status. Results showed that …

Eighteenth-Century Queer Studies, Revisited, Jeremy Chow

Faculty Journal Articles

This review essays opens with concerns over “crisis” that have spurred widespread panic about the state and future of the humanities. Crisis, I suggest, is the rallying call for new directions in and reinvention of 18th-century queer studies. By advocating for recuperative histories wherein crisis is a motivational force that pushes 18th-century queer studies to be further self-reflexive and intersectional, I examine three potent trends and their portents for 18th-century studies: masculinity studies, the nexus of queer and disability studies, and trans studies. I close with a continued call for examinations of queerness and race as they might enlighten the …

Challenging The Illusion Of Diversity: A New Theoretical Paradigm Towards Newsroom Inclusion., Paromita Saha

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past forty years, the news industry has attempted to diversify the racial composition of their newsrooms from the perspective of representing their markets better mirroring best business practices in the industry. The statistics show that an affirmative style of recruitment has produced minimal, superficial results with a high turnover of minority journalists who are hardly promoted to editorial positions, as well as skewed representations of minority racial groups. The literature indicates that hegemonic ideological forces and the White male professional ethos behind journalism is not conducive to minority journalists producing meaningful changes to news content. My study indicates …

The Bmslss: Measurement Invariance And Latent Mean Differences Across Black And White Early Adolescents, Kimberly Gibson Sitter

Theses and Dissertations

The Brief Measure of Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS; Seligson, Huebner, & Valois, 2003) is a widely used brief self-report measure of child and adolescent Life Satisfaction (LS). Although acceptable reliability and validity have been demonstrated for the BMSLSS across various youth samples, few cross-cultural comparisons have been performed. Specifically, no studies to date have examined measurement invariance of the BMSLSS across diverse samples of racial groups in the US. The current study explored measurement invariance across Black and White middle school students (N = 1484) from four schools in a southeastern U.S. state through use of multi-group confirmatory factor …

The 2020 Awakening: A Study On Exhibiting Topics Of Race And Identity In Mid-Sized Art Museums, Samantha Becker

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

After the many racial injustices that occurred in 2020, cultural institutions have been motivated to educate the public on historical and contemporary topics of race and identity. This project sought to analyze exemplary cases of exhibition production with topics of race and identity in mid-sized art museums. The goal was to provide a set of recommendations for exhibiting these topics to bolster community trust. Two museums were studied–the Montclair Art Museum and Newark Museum of Art–which revealed that the exhibitions at both institutions were relevant to contemporary issues, engaging to their respective communities, and educational for a wide range of …

“Idol”: Examining The Intersection Of Race, Gender, And Sexuality In Boybands, Grace Maynard

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In response to the socio-political climate of recent years, there has been a growing category of socially-engaged pop music. These works can be explicitly connected to their ideas about gender, race, and age. While boybands may not be perceived to create activist works of art, they do often have large public platforms with potential to reach out to a mass population of dedicated fans. They are given the power and privilege of a life in the limelight. As such, their messages may carry deeper meanings than at first glance. This thesis explores the impact of successful boybands by examining The …

Ancestral Pursuits: A Multicultural Celebration Of Identity & Race, Charlotte Cates Castro

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using critical historical rhetorical methods along with critical race and decolonial theory, this project situates ancestral pursuits as a communication-centered discursive formation by investigating the rhetorical strategies modern biotech and genealogy companies utilize to influence contemporary discourse around identity and belonging and narrate ethnicity and genealogy as acts of consumption. Through direct-to-consumer DNA testing and complimentary services, modern day biotech and genealogy companies like Ancestry and 23andMe market personalized insights into ancestry, genealogy, inherited traits, and health data that promise to connect users to their past, as well as to situate them in present-day society, through a deeper understanding of …

Blue Rage: A Critical Cultural Analysis Of Policing, Whiteness, And Racial Surveillance, Wesley T. Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an interpretive project deploying critical media analysis and interpretive qualitative methods to examine televisual and cinematic performances of policing. I use interpretive qualitative inquiry to explore blue rage, policing, and whiteness. By highlighting the racial surveillance which undergirds policing, I analyze blue rage as a critical race concept that addresses the affective policing of racial resentment and racial solidarity among law enforcement. My media analyses demonstrate the ways that whiteness is operationalized through law and order and criminal justice. Analyzing cinematic and televisual depictions of the police and racist surveillance, I address policing—as a profession, as a …

Enacting Anti-Racist Visualities Through Photo-Dialogues On Race In Paris, Francesca Sobande, Alice Schoonejans, Guillaume D. Johnson, Kevin D. Thomas, Anthony Kwame Harrison

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose

Grounded in experience of co-organizing a two-day photography-based workshop in Paris, this paper explores how photo-dialogues can facilitate anti-racist pedagogy and generative discussions about how race and racism function in marketplace contexts.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper draws on the authors' involvement in a cross-national and cross-disciplinary team of scholars who worked with local community stakeholders—including activists, artists and practitioners—to discuss, theorize and photo-document issues regarding race and racism in the Parisian marketplace.

Findings

This paper contributes to the literature on visual culture studies and critical race studies as it demonstrates the potentials of photography combined with dialogue to challenge the …

"Beyond The Lines": A Reassessment Of Civil War Prisons, Beth Kruse

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Beyond the Lines”: A Reassessment of Civil War Prisons, challenges the historical interpretations of Civil War military prisons. Specifically, it analyses the political, social, and economic conditions of these systems by not only adding omitted gender, class, and race scholarship but flushing out the power dynamics between these group and military administrations. The re-examination of primary source material by reading against the grain to find overlooked insights reveals these sources not only provide a wealth of information about omitted groups, but that they have been misinterpreted. Additionally, applying the concepts of historical memory establishes how the Lost Cause shaped not …

(2025) Curriculum Vitae Of Leonard Harris, Leonard Harris

Collected Papers of Leonard Harris

No abstract provided.

Cultivation Theory: Media Effects Toward Consumer Evaluations Of The Criminal Courts, Lindsey Dale Elliott

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

A substantial body of literature connects media effects to consumer perceptions of the criminal justice system. Research on the topic of cultivation theory has highlighted that an increased fear of crime within the general populace, due to an exaggeration of violence and criminal activity in the mass media, has spurred increased support for punitive policing, harsher sentencing, and positive feelings toward capital punishment. However, no research exists to explicate the cultivation of consumer perceptions toward the criminal courts. This study examines the impact of media consumption through television, the internet, and social media on consumer evaluations of the criminal courts. …

The Meat Of The Gothic: Animality And Social Justice In United States Fiction And Film Of The Twenty-First Century, Amber Hodge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Meat of the Gothic: Animality and Social Justice in United States Fiction and Film of the Twenty-First Century— situates twenty-first century US gothic narratives in relation to animal studies, even as it illuminates how these narratives interrogate the effects of historic and ongoing global systems of human oppression: slavery, imperialism, and capitalism. Instead of reacting to bias by asserting a claim to a humanity perpetually imbricated in divisions of class, race, and gender, present-day authors and filmmakers create characters who form communities that include nonhuman actors as a means of generating empowerment and critique. My approach to these narratives …

Pushing The Limits Of Black Atlantic And Hispanic Transatlantic Studies Through The Exploration Of Three U.S. Afro-Latio Memoirs, Julia Luján

Theses and Dissertations

In my dissertation project I intend to push the boundaries, by placing them in dialogue with each other, of both the Black Atlantic and the Hispanic Transatlantic Studies while exploring the cultural production of two groups that are generally excluded from the scholarly research done on the African Diaspora: U.S. Afro-Latinos and Afro-Argentines. While Black Atlantic Studies focuses on the Anglophone world and Hispanic Transatlantic Studies focuses on the Spanish-speaking world, they both ignore the two groups mentioned above as they complicate the boundaries of these fields by sitting at the intersections of race, language, and location.

Furthermore, I explore …

Type One Diabetes Mellitus In Immigrant And Minority Pediatric Populations, Kristina Nielson

Student Works

Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is a prevalent chronic illness affecting children and adolescents. Globally, it is estimated that at least 1 million children under the age of 19 years are affected by T1DM. Immigrants and minorities have worse diabetic outcomes than the majority population. The purpose of this article is to identify common challenges in children with T1DM who are part of immigrant or minority populations. Major health challenges for children with T1DM who are immigrants or minorities include issues regarding access to healthcare, communication, and cultural adaptation. Access of children with T1DM to high-quality healthcare and new diabetes …

“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, …

Gender, Race, And Class In Various Aspects Of American Literature: A Portfolio, Harry Olafsen

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

In this portfolio, Harry Olafsen takes a closer look at various texts in American Literature, including women in 1960s country music, Us directed by Jordan Peele, and southern women's diaries from the Civil War.

Framing And Newspaper Coverage Of Racial Integration, Amy Unruh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For many Americans who grew up in the 1960s, the first published information about Africans came directly from Africa, in the form of exotic photographs and stories in National Geographic. Susan Goldberg, Editor in Chief of National Geographic, addressed the issue of race portrayals in the magazine, reflecting on the realization that National Geographic often provided readers “their first look at the world” while rarely acknowledging the struggles of race in the United States. The magazine displayed full-color photographs depicting Africans from many nations, dressed in native clothing and jewelry, positioned in settings that implied dignity, beauty and strength. Meanwhile, …

“I Matter”: Analyzing Self-Care, Racial Performativity, And Podcasting*, Molly Shilo

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

The term “self-care” has recently entered pop culture through women’s magazines, feminist blogs, social media and other digital spaces. While the rhetoric has largely been about white, heterosexual, middle-to-upper class women, many Black feminists have politicized self-care and self-love as a form of resistance against a world that continuously negates their existence and humanity. The contemporary self-care movement has its roots in the Black feminist thought’s love-politics and scholar-activists Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Kimberlé Crenshaw. Continuing in this Black feminist tradition, Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton create a digital auditory enclave with their podcast Another Round where they openly …

Strategies Exemplary Social Studies Teachers’ Implement When Facilitating Discussions About Race, Candice Nicole Jasmer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teachers experience difficulty in introducing some sensitive and controversial issues in the classroom environment. The purpose of this qualitative instrumental case study was to identify strategies that exemplary secondary social studies teachers implement when facilitating classroom discussions about sensitive and controversial issues, specifically, racial issues framed within Singleton and Linton’s 4 agreements of courageous conversations: stay engaged, speak your truth, experience discomfort, and accept and expect nonclosure. This study utilized qualitative data collection. Semi-structured, online one-to-one internet-based interviews were used to document the lived experiences of exemplary secondary social studies teachers and the strategies they use when facilitating discussions about …

"The Headwaters Of A River Of Failure": Detroit As An Icon Of American Decline, Jae H. Roe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This essay analyzes films (8 Mile, Gran Torino, It Follows) and television series (Hung, Low Winter Sun) that use the setting of Detroit to depict characters who are dealing with deteriorating socioeconomic conditions and whose choices and relationships reflect their difficulties in, and anxieties about, adjusting to such conditions. While the familiar icons of Detroit's decline appear in all of these texts, the narratives evolve from working class realism to satire and ultimately horror, or from anxieties about white working class displacement to the displacement of such anxieties. The history of Detroit illustrates the complex ways …

The Cultivation Theory And Reality Television: An Old Theory With A Modern Twist, Jeffrey Weiss

Capstone Showcase

George Gerbner, a Hungarian-born professor of communication, founded the cultivation theory, one of the most popular and regarded theories in the communications world. Developed in the mid 20th century, the theory focus on the long-term effects of television on people. Longer exposure to signs, images and people on television cultivates their perception of reality in the real world. The television became a household staple during this time. Families often spent time together watching programming together, however, it played out different effects for each person. Television's constant visual and auditory stimulation on a person made it easier to cultivate certain messages, …

Bonding Over Bondage: Slavery, Racial Complexities And Commonalities In New Orleans, 1803-1819, Andrew Ruben Rodriguez

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Different events in the nineteenth century have transformed America’s sociopolitical,

physical and cultural landscape and contributed to the formation of an American identity based on political liberty, a concept that revolved around the notion of freedom. The concept of slavery, which was opposite of liberty, would be a powerful force throughout American history. As Reverend John A. Ryan explained, liberty “consists mainly of the right to engage in an occupation, to make contracts, and to acquire property. From the beginning of our history as a nation, the constitutions of the various states protected this sphere of liberty for members of …