Digital Commons Network^™

Pickin In Petticoats: Lotta Crabtree And Women In The Elevation Of The Banjo, Michael Wright

World Music Textbook

This chapter explores early 20th century efforts to distance the banjo from its African American roots to meet the demands of a rising market of women players, highlighting actress Lotta Crabtree's influential role in reshaping the instrument's identity.

Large Landlords, Code Violations, And Eviction Filing: Evidence From Albany, Ny, Andy Kaier

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Eviction is a major contributor to cycles of urban poverty, and a growing body of research has documented eviction’s harmful effects. This study finds that landlord size and the number of code violations associated with the landlord’s portfolio both predict higher numbers of eviction filings. Using eviction filing data and newly available code violation data from Albany, NY in 2023 and 2024, this study examines landlord characteristics and their association with eviction filing. This study also examines public housing, finding that the Albany Housing Authority is the largest eviction filer in Albany in the study period. These findings are concerning …

Predictors Of Low Birthweight Using Data From Electronic Medical Records In Flint, Michigan, 2013 To 2016, Rie Suzuki, Neida Monroy-Sechague

Michigan Journal of Public Health

Introduction: Infant mortality continues to be a major health problem in Michigan, with low birthweight (LBW) being a leading cause. Between 2020 and 2022, Black infants were nearly twice as likely to be LBW compared to White infants. The purpose of this study was to use electronic medical records (EMR) data to assess predictors of LBW and determine whether race influenced this relationship using a unique data source of EMR in Flint, Michigan (MI).

Methods: A retrospective study from 2013 to 2016 was conducted at the Health Resources and Services Administration local health center in Flint, MI. Demographics, birth …

Illinois: Spatial Scales Of Poverty, Wendy Shaw

The Geographical Bulletin

Answers gleaned in any study of poverty are in some measure a result of the spatial scale of analysis selected. This paper views poverty in Illinois from three spatial scales; the state, county, and census tract. Mapping census data reveals several facets of Illinois poverty. Illinois as a whole, is average in terms of general poverty levels, although many ofthe poor are severely impoverished. County level analysis indicates that poor rural southern Illinois contrasts with affluent urban areas. Census tract level investigation reveals that seemingly affluent urban counties in reality have a distinct internal spatial structure. The urban poor are …

Book Reviews, Jessica Depew, W. Maclane Hall, Kathryn Greenberg

Trotter Review

Book Reviews for Volume 23, Issue 2 of theTrotter Review.

Introduction: History, Race, And The Urban Environment, Hettie V. Williams

Trotter Review

Introduction for Volume 23, Issue 2 of theTrotter Review.

Breathing While Black: How New York's Marginalized Communities Reshaped Urban Environmentalism, 1880-2020, Nancy Andoh

Trotter Review

Article for Volume 23, Issue 2 of theTrotter Review.

Social Patterns In Physical Infrastructure: Associations Between Socioeconomic Status And Walkability, Kaylee Coursey

Honors Theses

Studies analyzing the relationship between socioeconomic status and physical infrastructure of a city are inconsistent in findings but agree on racial and class disparities. Utilizing walkability (Walk Score) as a measurement for physical infrastructure, this thesis aims to understand the relationship between socioeconomic status and the walkability of a city. The Socio-Ecological framework suggests that environmental experiences are correlated with the social functioning of a community. Thus, socioeconomic status has a significant impact on the quality of one’s built environment.

Using housing data from the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS) and Walk Score, a series of quantitative analyses were conducted …

“It’S Essential We Learn How To Grow For Ourselves”: The Legacies Of Black Gardening In Racialized Food Systems., Funmi Odumosu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I aim to investigate the impact of food racism on Black communities, with a specific focus on the importance of gardening in combatting food apartheid and fostering holistic connections to nature and community in school-aged children. Inequitable access to major retail supermarkets and unequal distribution of healthy food options are intentionally occurring patterns in the food spaces of predominately Black communities. These food system inequities exacerbate a lack of consumption and potential consequences on the health and well-being of children of color particularly during critical physical and cognitive developmental periods.

Many solutions to these inequities entail implementing …

Race And American College Testing (Act) Scores In Illinois, Wendy Shaw, Bin Zhou

The Geographical Bulletin

This paper explores links between race and ethnicity, and performance on the American College Testing (ACT) within Illinois. This paper utilizes information about the performance of Illinois’ 85, 480 year 2000 graduating seniors who took the ACT assessment. The ACT scores reported by county are broken down into various racial and ethnic groupings, and a Geographic Information System was used to map and explore the spatial dimensions of the data. The results of the analysis indicate that performance on the ACT varies by the type of county involved, and is linked to family income rather than to race per se. …

The Pedagogy And Politics Of Racial Passing: Examining Media Literacy In Turn-Of-The-Century Activist Periodicals, Tara Propper

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article explores how we can use African American activist media to theorize the role of pedagogy in the public sphere. Focusing on how racial passing stories expose the limiting (and often tropic) binaries through which racial identity is deciphered, this analysis further highlights the extent to which these binary constructions of identity are learned through media narration.

Using the December 1912, issue of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Crisis Magazine as a touchstone for investigation, this analysis considers how pedagogy is taken up as both a theme and project in the magazine. Foregrounding the degree to which Crisis critiques …

Transcript: The Intersection Of Race And Poverty In Criminal Justice, Stephen B. Bright

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Transcript of the lecture given by Bright at the University of Tennessee College of Law Summers-Wyatt Lecture given on September 27, 2010.

White Nimbyism And Diversity Close To Home, Lucy Britt, Andreas Jozwiak

All Faculty Scholarship

Objective: We use a survey experiment to study what explains white “not in my backyard” opposition (NIMBYism) to dense and affordable housing—racial threat, material self-interest, or both. Methods: In a survey experiment on white U.S. respondents, we vary the presence of a racial prime about black and Latinx community organizations and the proximity of the housing development to the subject's home. We then measure levels of support for a proposed hypothetical housing development, willingness to take political action in support of or opposition to the development, and support for a number of housing-related and redistributive policies. Results: We find that …

Race And The Manufacturing Workforce: Opportunities To Expand Growth And Equity In A Rebounding Industry Sector, Benjamin Armstrong, Matthew D. Wilson, Nichola J. Lowe

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

This paper provides an overview of the manufacturing work experience of different racial groups. Our goal is to lend support to “middle-out” policy responses that seek to promote greater economic opportunity across the country through targeted sector growth, including manufacturing, while also bringing together people of all races in support of manufacturing regeneration. By pinpointing persistent inequities in U.S. manufacturing, we hope to embolden policy responses that ensure that as the manufacturing sector rebounds and continues to evolve, its high-paying, good-quality jobs are also more inclusive of workers of color.

Living Color: Aesthetic Surfaces And Political Life In Brazil, Samuel E. Novacich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about the manipulation of appearances – of both the human body and the built environment – in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Focused on Afro-aesthetic makeup and tanning practices as well as urban renewal projects, this ethnographic study reveals how the making over of both the skin and the urban landscape shape social inequalities and contribute to productions of race, gender, and national belonging. While some of the aesthetic technologies examined herein may be characterized as “bottom up” – or as the self-fashioning tactics of marginalized Afro-Brazilians – others constitute “top down” infrastructural interventions led by the state …

Moral Injury In Police Officers Of Color, Samantha J. Thornton

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this research is to explore the possibility of Moral Injury (MI) in police officers of color. This is a topic that is steeped in stigma and cultural dynamics, both for the community of police and communities of color. The aim is to add to the existing research on MI and how it may impact those who occupy dual special populations. The study approached targeted police advocacy organizations of color for recruitment nationwide. This study recruited 10 police officers of color from multiple states and explored their personal stories. This study used video recordings to capture qualitative data …

Sex Work, Antitrafficking, And Mobility, Simanti Dasgupta

Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications

With the HIV/AIDS epidemic gripping the world in the 1990s and the resurgence of the antitrafficking discourse in the 2000s, the sex work/abolitionist debate took center stage. Proponents of sex work uphold the labor and livelihood paradigm based on consent; the abolitionists, on the other hand, dismiss sex work as work to posit prostitution as the paradigmatic example of patriarchal violence toward women. The latter routinely conflate sex work with trafficking, and the former sharply demarcates them. Above all, this debate poses a stubborn ideological divide among feminists with serious policy implications for both the worker and the victim, nationally …

Unequal Neighbors In Diverse Neighborhoods: Accounting For Variation In The Impact Of Relative Inequality On Neighborhood Crime, Samuel A. Torres

Sociology ETDs

Research demonstrates that crime rate differences across racially segregated urban communities are primarily attributable to uneven distributions of resources between neighborhoods. Less is known about the role economic inequality within neighborhoods, what I call relative inequality, plays in maintaining ethno-racial criminal disparities. In this dissertation I explore sources of variation in the impact of relative inequality on neighborhood crime by drawing on data from the 2010-2013 National Neighborhood Crime Study Panel (NNCS2-P). I find that relative inequality effects are attenuated in higher disadvantage neighborhoods and this interaction accounts for differences in effect size by neighborhood ethno-racial composition. Results also show …

Defining Humanity In The Popular Imagination: The Neanderthal And The Early Modern Human In H.G. Wells And Yuval Noah Harari, Laurel Bayless

The Geographical Bulletin

Popular depictions of Neanderthals place them in a liminal position between the human and nonhuman. Examination of how such depictions have changed over time reveals evolving and enduring ideas about humanity and nature. Descriptions of Neanderthals and the prehistoric anatomically modern humans who encountered them in Europe reveal the features their authors see as essential to humanity. Not only do authors project their contemporary ideas onto Neanderthals, but doing so but then naturalizes those ideas. H.G. Wells, one of the f irst popular writers to discuss Neanderthals, depicted Neanderthals as shambling, inhuman brutes, whereas he used colonial ideas about the …

Culturally And Linguistically Responsive Teaching In K-12 Education, Samantha Valenta

Graduate Teacher Education

Students of color have been historically underserved and underrepresented in the education system due to bias. To combat said racist system, teachers need guidance on how to teach their students of color in an equitable way. Every student deserves the chance to succeed. This paper synthesized multiple researchers’ findings over the effects of culturally and linguistically responsive teaching (CLRT) on students of color via qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method studies. The findings concluded that CLRT was beneficial to students and would increase their academic achievement via improving their mental health, engagement, behavior, and literacy. A cyclical correlation was found between all …

Crafting Lives: Experiences Of Ethiopian Refugees In Cairo, Nayrose S. Abd El-Megid

Theses and Dissertations

There has been an ongoing influx of refugees for years driven by political instability, famine, and prolonged conflicts in the region, leading many individuals to seek sanctuary in other countries. Egypt has become a host country for many years, whether for settlement or transit, for various populations from different nationalities hoping to find refuge. However, amidst this influx, Ethiopian refugees often find themselves overlooked or usually associated on the sidelines with other African nationalities; their stories and struggles are marginalized in broader narratives of displacement. The experience of Ethiopians is heterogeneous and multidimensional in terms of their intersectional identities of …

Critical Race Theory Bans And The Changing Canon: Cultural Appropriation In Narrative, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

Thirty-five states have enacted critical race theory bans at the level of elementary and secondary public education, and seven states have extended these to the university level. One way to resist these attempts to repress a healthy democracy by whitewashing history is through a pedagogy of antiracism, including literary works. The question of what that would look like involves questions of cultural appropriation, which occurs when one takes from another culture, such as a writer creating a narrative about a character outside of the writer’s cultural identity. This Article considers the story of Ota Benga, brought from the Congo to …

Review: Jesuits And Race: A Global History Of Continuity And Change, 1530–2020, Eds. Nathaniel Millett And Charles H. Parker, Melodie Wyttenbach

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

No abstract provided.

Siegel, Helen, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Helen Siegel’s family came to the Bronx from Germany in the years leading up to World War Two. Siegel was born in 1945 and grew up in the West Bronx about a mile away from Yankee Stadium, which she remembers as a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. She attended Bronx public schools throughout her education, PS 64, JHS 117, and Taft High School, before going on to City College, receiving what she believes to have been a good education. Siegel would teach at Bronx elementary schools for 25 years and serve as a mentor for new teachers. She recognizes that teaching and …

#Hotgirlsemestersyllabus, Katrina Marie Overby, Gheni Platenburg, Niya Pickett Miller

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Racial-Sexual Normativity In/As Narratives Of “The Human”, Jeri Brand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis synthesizes Sylvia Wynter’s and Judith Butler’s models of identity-formation to analyze discourses of racialization and sex/gender difference in normative scientific theories of “the human.” I argue that eugenicist white supremacism and sex/gender normativity form a single conceptual framework – what I call “the racial-sexual matrix” – throughout these scientific narratives. I then trace an epistemological consistency across 18^th- through 21^st-century scientific literature as evidence for the ongoing legacies of coloniality, white supremacy, and eugenics in current hegemonic sex/gender ontologies. Finally, I contend that the racial-sexual matrix functions as an index of proper humanness not …

Staying Power: The Struggle For Space And Place In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Erin E. Lilli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation looks at how gentrification touches down, at the neighborhood and individual scale, in Crown Heights and reproduces experiences of racial inequality in home and place. Taking an historical materialist approach and drawing on residential oral histories, this study frames these reproductions of racial inequality as always-in-tension with ongoing acts of resistance from Black homeowners, renters, and long-term residents. Specifically, the research explores the conditions under which Black residents of a predominantly Afro-Caribbean neighborhood acquire and maintain—and in some cases lose—their housing and sense of place and belonging. These residents resist the varied tactics of anti-Blackness such as landlord …

What Does It Mean To Talk About Tolkien And Diversity? A Look Within And Without The Legendarium, Yvette Kisor

Journal of Tolkien Research

“What Does It Mean to Talk about Tolkien and Diversity? A Look within and without the Legendarium” considers racial diversity by focusing on the structure of Tolkien’s universe, both how it is modelled on ancient and medieval concepts like the Great Chain of Being and the Declining Ages of Man, but also remakes those models. In addition, it considers responses to racial structures perceived in Tolkien’s work.

Filling The Gap: Enhancing The Entrepreneurial Ecosystem For Black And Hispanic Entrepreneurs, Research Institute For Social Equity Rise

Research Institute for Social Equity

This white paper examines current research, identifies best practices within the United States, and formulates recommendations to further equity in access, process, quality, and outcomes to inform thought leaders, policymakers, practitioners, community influencers, and entrepreneurs on how to translate research into actions that benefit Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs within the entrepreneurial ecosystem from the greater Richmond community.

Crowdsourcing Surveillance, Chaz Arnett

Faculty Scholarship

In Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment, Devon W. Carbado illuminates how both the spectacular and quotidian forms of racialized terror, brutality, and surveillance—characteristic of enslavement—have shaped the construction of our constitutional order. He argues that the combined social normalization and legal naturalization of racial hierarchy paved the way for the development of slave patrols and other early iterations of policing where incredible acts of violence against Black bodies were made ordinary and essential. He explains how this legacy continues today with Fourth Amendment jurisprudence not simply failing to protect rights but rather licensing police violence …