Digital Commons Network^™

Conflict And Race In Literature & Law. The Case Of Americanah, Emanuela Ignatoiu Sora

Comparative Woman

In Americanah, the 2013 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there is a scene when one of the characters, Laura, speaks of her Ugandan classmate who did not get along with an African-American colleague. Laura is surprised as, for her, all persons of color are similar, with no understanding for their differences in background, personal stories and experiences. The novel depicts and critiques this very categorization of race, which flattens differences, conflating groups and individuals who might share very little, if anything. For a long time, law (with its stipulations, precedents and rulings) has operated in a similar manner, disengaging …

From “Black” To “Khaek”: Thai Superiority And Ethnic Assimilation In King Vajiravudh’S Adaptation Of Othello, Phaya Ratchawangsan, Faris Yothasamuth

Perspectives in the Arts and Humanities Asia

Phaya Ratchawangsan is a Thai adaptation by King Vajiravudh in 1911 of Shakespeare’s Othello. It mainly follows the plot of Othello, but the settings and all characters are changed to resemble Thai places and names. Othello the Moor becomes the Malay general Phaya Ratchawangsan. As Othello presents the relationship between the “blackamoor” and white Europeans, so Phaya Ratchawangsan presents the relationship between the Malay outsider or “Khaek” and Thais. This article argues that as King Vajiravudh transposed Othello to the Thai setting, the racial theme persisted. While Phaya Ratchawangsan does not exhibit a direct racist thought that targets the Malay, …

Self-Reported Multicultural Teaching Knowledge Of K-12 Teachers, Ailish Raftery

Masters Theses

Research continues to show that students who belong to racial and/or ethnic minority groups face a variety of challenges at school, such as disproportionate rates of drop out, behavioral problems, exclusionary discipline practices, absenteeism, placement in special education, and more. These challenges are thought to contribute to the academic achievement gap between White and racial/ethnic minority students throughout the American public school system. Therefore, it is important to assess the multicultural teaching competence of American teachers and investigate barriers to improving culturally responsive teaching practices. Past research has investigated teachers’ multicultural teaching competence, but fewer compared general and special education …

Dancing Between Worlds: Afrofuturism, Hybridity, Transculturalism, And The Orixás, Alicia Nascimento Castro

Dance (MFA) Theses

This research uses a multicultural lens to analyze the intersections of race and geography. It aims to acknowledge the corporeality of spiritual practices to investigate creative movement. Afrofuturism becomes a theoretical framework utilized as a space for liberation into the past, present, and future. Hybridity is adapted to examine identitdade dupla regarding national, racial, cultural, and lingual identities. The research explores Transculturalism by centering Blackness and interrogating the political powers of race in both the United States and Brazil. The physical manifestation utilizes the Black imaginary with choreography, set design, costuming, and musical composition as ideological frames for time travel …

Beyond Discrimination: Market Humiliation And Private Law, Hila Keren

University of Colorado Law Review

Market humiliation is a corrosive relational process to which the law repeatedly fails to respond due to the law’s heavy reliance on the discrimination paradigm. In this process, providers of market resources, from housing and work to goods and services, use their powers to reject or mistreat other market users due to their identities. They thus cause users severe harm and deprive them of dignified participation in the marketplace. The problem has recently reached a peak. The discussion in 303 Creative v. Elenis indicates that the Supreme Court might legitimize market humiliation by granting private providers broad free speech exemptions …

Sexual Assault Disclosure: The Role Of Survivor And Disclosure Recipient Race & Ethnicity, Nola J.A. Browne

Honors Undergraduate Theses

To date, most research on sexual assault disclosure has utilized samples composed predominately of White women (Fedina et al., 2018). As a result, there is a need for research that examines sexual assault disclosure within racially and ethnically diverse samples. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine whether survivors’ race/ethnicity is related to whether they disclose their sexual assault to others of the same and different races and ethnicities. The study recruited undergraduate college students from the UCF Psychology Department Sona System to complete an online survey that assessed history of sexual assault and disclosure of sexual assault …

Growing Up Sustainable? Politics Of Race And Youth In Urbanplan, Copenhagen, Max Ritts, Rebecca Rutt

Geography

This paper considers how racialized youth in Denmark negotiate sustainability amid contexts marked by intersecting forms of economic restructuring, progressive neoliberalism, white ethno-nationalism, and green urban planning. Urbanplan is a low-income, notoriously “troubled” Copenhagen neighborhood where we conducted fieldwork for 7 months (2019-2020) with fifteen male youth, aged 17-21. Using ethnography, policy reviews, and interviews with city social workers, we explore how intimate experiences of nature, group-identity, and place attachment here relate to and depart from the structural forces actively reshaping the neighborhood. Our analysis combines Cindi Katz's intersectional political economy approach with recent work on green gentrification, Critical Utopian …

Hidden In Plain Sight: Redefining The Field Of National Security, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

Throughout his campaign for presidency, Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. As President, he kept his word. Only days after he took office, the new administration released the first version of the Executive Order: Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States. The first Executive Order, however, did not say the word Muslim. Instead, it listed only Muslim-majority countries as necessary for restrictions on entry. The Executive Order also trafficked in stereotypes about Muslims, such as the need to ban people who engage in acts of "bigotry or hatred," including honor killings. …

International Bestsellers And The Online Reconfiguring Of National Identity, Rachel Noorda, Millicent Weber, Melanie Ramdarshan Bold

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

International bestsellers are the ideal sites for examining the complicated relationship between literary culture and national identity. Despite the transnational turns in both literary studies and book history, place is still an important configurer of twenty-first-century book reception. Books are crucial to national identity and catalysts of nationalist movements. On an individual level, books enable readers to shape and maintain their own national identities. This Element explores how contemporary readers' understandings of nation, race/ethnicity, gender, and class continue to shape their reading, using as case studies the online reception of three bestseller titles-Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies (Australia), Zadie Smith's …

(Special Section, Hymns Beyond The Congregation Ii): Spiritual Concert-Fundraisers, Singing Conventions, And Cherokee Language Learning Academies: Vernacular Southern Hymnbooks In Noncongregational Settings, Jesse P. Karlsberg, Kaylina M. Crawley, Sara S. Hopkins

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Noncongregational settings were integral to hymnody in the postbellum settler colonial context of the southern United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The incorporation of hymn singing into a wide range of noncongregational settings served Black, white, and Native populations in navigating unsettled racial dynamics during this period across the US South and its diasporas. This essay features three case studies examining hymn collections intended or repurposed for a range of noncongregational uses: spiritual collections connected with the performing ensembles of black institutions, a shape-note songbook that attempted to bridge singing convention and congregational contexts, and a …

Gifted And Talented Student Performance On State Achievement Tests, Dondre Harris

ATU Theses and Dissertations 2021 - Present

The exploration of dissecting gifted and talented programs combined with student advancement and academic success is one daunting but doable. The purpose of this study was to investigate the equity of the gifted and talented program while analyzing the achievement scores of these students compared to their peers. This quantitative study includes an evaluation of third through fifth grade students in a central Arkansas school district while merging the relationships of the general education population versus the academically gifted and talented population. Both groups were examined through the independent variables classified as ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. A descriptive data …

Beyond Whiteness: Revisiting Jews In Ethnic America, Jonathan Karp

The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual Review

The concept of ethnicity, once in vogue, has largely gone out of fashion among twenty-first-century social scientists, now replaced by models of assimilation defined in terms of the construction of whiteness and white supremacy. Beyond Whiteness: Revisiting Jews in Ethnic America explores the benefits of reconfiguring the ethnic concept as a tool to analyze the experiences of twentieth-century American Jews—not only in relation to other “white” groups of European descent, but also African Americans and Asian Americans, among others. The essays presented here, ranging from comparative studies of Jews and Asians as “model minorities” to the examination of postethnic “Jews …

Sharp Stick Grasps At Autistic Women’S Liminal Vulnerability, Meaghan Krazinski

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This film analysis of Sharp Stick by Lena Dunham critically explores how the film uptakes representations of the ideas around the vulnerabilities of Autistic women in popular culture, and yet does not explicitly name them as such. This liminality is critical and plays into the intersectional analysis that the author engages around the way vulnerability and Autistic identity is interpreted and read. The author draws upon McDermott's (2022) "neurotypical gaze" in an analysis that shows how traditional tropes around Autistic women’s vulnerability are social constructions that are brought into relief by stereotypes around race, gender, and ability. The author uses …

Restitution For Haiti, Reparations For All: Haiti’S Place In The Global Reparations Movement, Brian Concannon Jr., Kristina Fried, Alexandra V. Filippova

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

Haiti’s claim for restitution of the debt coerced by France in exchange for Haiti’s 1804 independence has unique legal advantages that can open the door to broader reparations for the descendants of all people harmed by slavery. But in order to assert the claim, Haiti first needs help reclaiming its democracy from a corrupt, repressive regime propped up by the powerful countries that prospered through slavery and overthrew the Haitian President who dared to assert his country’s legal claim. This article explores Haiti’s Independence Debt, and the fight for restitution of it, in the context of two centuries of continued …

Racial Dis/Embodiment: A Discourse Theoretical Analysis Of University International Offices’ Websites, Gian-Louis Hernandez

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Special Issue

How Early Modern English Pedagogy Shaped The Gendered And Racialized Use Of Magic In William Shakespeare’S The Tempest, Erin Lindsay Faya

Graduate Thesis Collection

Magical usage plays a significant role in William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. However, who gets to use magic and in what ways? Why is Prospero painted the protagonist while Sycorax gets labeled a witch though both use magic? This thesis looks at how early modern English pedagogy shapes the use of magic in The Tempest. When magic is read as knowledge, then the pedagogy influencing early modern education dictates whose knowledge counts and is seen as correct and whose is erased and vilified. The epistemological formation happening in early modern England is apparent in The Tempest as Prospero uses magic …

The Relationship Between Cancer Screening Utilization And Racial Discrimination, Priya Small, Amanda M. Hinson-Enslin, Timothy Crawford, Joanna M. Anderson

University Libraries' Staff Publications

Objective. To assess literature about cancer screening and cancer screening adherence among people of color and how discrimination impacts cancer screening and cancer screening adherence outcomes among patients of color.Methods. PRISMA guidelines were used for the systematic review. EBSCO/MEDLINE, Web of Science, and CINAHL were searched and articles were uploaded in to Rayyan Systematic Review software. Three independent reviewers identified additional articles by searching reference lists of relevant articles; they completed the screening process and reviewed the included articles.Results. Nine eligible studies were included, among which two were qualitative and seven were quantitative. Studies included one cancer screening measure and …

A Difference Of One's Own: Race, Sex, Modernism, Ryan L. Tracy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“A Difference of One’s Own” demonstrates that deconstructive conceptions of race lie at the heart of the modernist canon’s experimental representations of selfhood. Drawing on recent and canonical scholarship in Modernist Studies, Black Studies, Deconstruction, Queer Theory, Critical Theory, and Feminist Studies, I look at moments in modernist-era literature where the need to represent racial blackness, whether as a descriptor that defines one’s self-identity or the identity of another person, fails to draw a coherent line of difference between people, communities, selves, and importantly, the literatures that are thought to adhere to hard and fast racial distinctions. “Part I: …

The Ripple Effect: Gender And Race In Brazilian Culture And Literature, Maria José Somerlate Barbosa

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

In The Ripple Effect: Gender and Race in Brazilian Culture and Literature, Barbosa adopts a comparative, multilayered, and interdisciplinary line of research to examine social values and cultural mores from the first decades of the twentieth century to the present. By analyzing the historical, cultural, religious, and interactive space of Brazil’s national identity, The Ripple Effect surveys expressive cultures and literary manifestations. It uses the martial art-dance-ritual capoeira as a lynchpin to disclose historical ambiguities and the negotiation of cultural and literary boundaries within the context of the ideological construct of a mestizo nation. The book also examines laws …

How The Concept Of Race And Ethnicity Played An Integral Role In The Sri Lanka Civil War From A Sociological Perspective, Pasan Vinura Joseph De Silva

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The social constructs of race and ethnicity played a pivotal role in the Sri Lankan Civil War as the intercommunal violence between the Sinhalese and Tamil groups was attributed to discriminatory policies. However, there is a lack of literature from published academic sources and archival/governmental data pertaining to the variables of race and ethnicity from a sociological perspective. The concept of race and ethnicity are an integral component of social conflict that identifies positions through self-consciousness as a cultural, religious, and linguistic community. This thesis utilizes historical research through qualitative secondary data sources to analyze how racial and ethnic inequities …

Tracing The Roots Of A Poisonous Tree: On The Origins And Impact Of Criminal Terminology In A Civil Apprehension Scheme, Shani Mahiri King, Nicole Silvestri Hall

Articles (Current Faculty)

Language is powerful. It can affect how we think about and treat groups of people. Poor language choices have a massive impact on immigration law, an area of the law that determines how groups of perceived “outsiders” are classified and regulated. Language and bias in judicial opinions have been studied, but less research has been done on poor language choices in immigration statutes.

This Comment focuses on the harmful effects of poor language choices in immigration statutes, including the criminal terminology “arrest” and “warrant” in civil immigration apprehension statutes 8 U.S.C. Sections 1226 and 1357. Two fundamental problems arise when …

(Special Section) Translating Race: Mission Hymns And The Challenge Of Christian Identity, Philip Burnett

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

“Ye seed of Israel’s chosen race,” “The race that long in darkness pined,” “To heal and save a race undone,” and “Sanctify a ransomed race” are a few examples of many references to “race” that exist in English-language hymnody. Throughout the nineteenth-century, hymns containing lines such as these, were exported from Britain into mission fields where translators had to find new ways to conceptualize notions of race and, in effect, created new group identities. This requires asking critical questions about the implications of what happened when ideas of race, in the Christian sense, interacted with non-religious notions of race in …

Latino Paradox Or Black Exception? Race, Ethnicity, And Crime In The 21st Century, Edward S. Shihadeh, Raymond E. Barranco

Faculty Publications

George Floyd’s murder by a Minnesota police officer sparked outrage, protests, and a re-evaluation of racial inequities in America. Within criminology, we argue, that re-evaluation should include the Latino Paradox, the idea that Latino communities are an exception—a paradox—in that, while they face economic deprivation, they also possess a magical something that makes them resistant to social problems like crime. Unfortunately, this compels the more delicate question; what is the deficiency in Black communities that makes them so vulnerable to crime? However, as we argue here, the Latino Paradox forces a false comparison. Its assumptions with respect to crime are …

Mixed Speak: Towards A Re-Poetics Of Race And Self, Celina Mizuki Ohga Samuelson

Media and Cultural Studies Honors Projects

This paper tells the stories of mixed-race Japanese people. I engage in a re-poetics, positing storytelling as an essential tool into complicating our understandings of race and self. I examine the relationship between language and race, exploring how subjects existing within a space of mixedness navigate identity-formation and racial belonging. Operating under a socio-constructivist lens, I begin with a brief re-telling of the history of race in Japan, re-framing mythologies of race throughout literature, legislation, and into national and colonial projects. While popular discourse alleges Japan was and is a country of racial homogeneity, I argue that this falsifies colonial …

Paths To Equity: Parents In Partnership With Ucedds Fostering Black Family Advocacy For Children On The Autism Spectrum, Elizabeth H. Morgan, Benita D. Shaw, Ida Winters, Chiffon King, Jazmin Burns, Aubyn Stahmer, Gail Chodron

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

Racism and ableism have doubly affected Black families of children with developmental disabilities in their interactions with disability systems of supports and services (e.g., early intervention, mental health, education, medical systems). On average, Black autistic children are diagnosed three years later and are up to three times more likely to be misdiagnosed than their non-Hispanic White peers. Qualitative research provides evidence that systemic oppression, often attributed to intersectionality, can cause circumstances where Black disabled youth are doubly marginalized by policy and practice that perpetuates inequality. School discipline policies that criminalize Black students and inadequate medical assessments that improperly support Black …

Katz, Gloria, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Gloria Katz’s family immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe, moving up from the Lower East Side to the Bronx on Park Avenue. She describes her many relatives coming to New York and making lives for themselves, including her parents meeting on a singles cruise around Manhattan for young immigrants and getting married. Her older brother was born in 1934, and was a rebellious and hyperactive child, getting kicked out of yeshiva and sent to public school. Katz was born in September 1944. She explains that because her father did not have stable employment in the fur industry during …

Social Support And Technology Use And Their Association With Mental And Physical Health During The Covid-19 Pandemic Among Asian Americans: The Compass Cross-Sectional Study, Linda G. Park, Oanh L. Meyer, Marcelle M. Dougan, Bethany Golden, Kevin Ta, Bora Nam, Janice Y. Tsoh, Marian Tzuang, Van M.Ta Park

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

BACKGROUND: The global COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) and revealed significant health disparities with reports of increased discrimination and xenophobia. Among AAPIs, the pandemic exacerbated their social, linguistic, and geographic isolation. Social support may be especially important for AAPIs given the salience of collectivism as a cultural value. Another mechanism for support among AAPIs was technology use, as it is generally widespread among this population. However, older adults may not perceive the same benefits. OBJECTIVE: We examined social support and technology use and their relationships with mental and physical health outcomes through the COVID-19 pandemic …

Development Of Southern Interracial Marriage And Divorce: Why Our Children Are Code-Switching, Zoe R. Grant

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

The fundamental basis of my final paper will be of my own lived experience. In my paper, I will argue that as a result of an interracial divorce, mixed-race children are learning to code-switch leading to a greater sense of empathy and community. I will pull from the theoretical framework of Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza” as well as other sources to support my claims.

By focusing heavily on a southern perspective, I will question whether or not a history of southern interracial marriage causes a strain on nuclear families. Are interracial children having new experiences, and …

Black Lives Monitored, Chaz Arnett

Faculty Scholarship

The police killing of George Floyd added fuel to the simmering flames of racial injustice in America following a string of similarly violent executions during a global pandemic that disproportionately ravaged the health and economic security of Black families and communities. The confluence of these painful realities exposed deep vulnerabilities and renewed a reckoning with the long unfulfilled promise of racial equality, inspiring large-scale protests around the country and across the globe. As with prior movements for racial justice, from slavery abolition to the civil rights movement’s demand to end Jim Crow, protests have been met with extreme force, either …

History's Speech Acts, Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

This Essay considers the historic relationship between symbolic public expressions of racial and religious identity—in particular, Confederate symbols and Christian religious displays. These displays sometimes comprise shared symbology, and the adoption of this symbology overlaps at distinct moments in U.S. history in which Confederate and Christian symbolism converged to express messages of combined religious and racial superiority. This Essay argues that these forms of expression can best be understood as “speech acts” that seek to construct a particular social reality, often in defiance of political and social fact. They thus not only express but also enact social hierarchies. It further …