Arts and Humanities Commons^™

I Will Not Wear A Muzzle, Tiarra L. Riggins

SURGE

Students are sent abroad to “become sensitive leaders in our changing world,” states the Gettysburg College Center for Global Education’s mission statement. We are asked to “foster global thinking and to instill a compassionate respect for others and our world.” Many students use this time to explore their true selves with hopes of not having to think too deeply about the life that they’ve left behind. [excerpt]

Who Can Afford To Improvise? James Baldwin And Black Music, The Lyric And The Listeners [Table Of Contents], Ed Pavlic

Literature

More than a quarter-century after his death, James Baldwin remains an unparalleled figure in American literature and African American cultural politics. In Who Can Afford to Improvise? Ed Pavlić offers an unconventional, lyrical, and accessible meditation on the life, writings, and legacy of James Baldwin and their relationship to the lyric tradition in black music, from gospel and blues to jazz and R&B. Based on unprecedented access to private correspondence, unpublished manuscripts and attuned to a musically inclined poet’s skill in close listening, Who Can Afford to Improvise? frames a new narrative of James Baldwin’s work and life.

The route …

Dreams Deferred: A Critical Narrative Analysis Of African American Males In Pursuit Of Higher Education, Martinique Starnes

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

Many studies have been conducted on the achievement gap between Caucasian and minority students (Bankston & Caldas, 1998; A. Brown & Donnor, 2011; Howard, 2008; O’Conner, Lewis, & Mueller, 2007; Osborne, 1999), as this gap has been a persistent problem for decades. However, despite more students of color gaining access to institutions of higher education, there is still a severe gap in college graduation rates (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2011), with African American males being the least likely group to be found on college campuses (Dunn, 2012), and thus, possessing the lowest college graduation rate. St. Peter Claver …

Sacred Spaces: A Narrative Analysis Of The Influences Of Language And Literacy Experiences On The Self-Hood And Identity Of High-Achieving African American Female College Freshmen, Michelle Flowers Taylor

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

Late-adolescent African American students face unique difficulties on their journey to womanhood. As members of a double minority (i.e., African American and female) (Jean & Feagin, 1998), certain limiting stereotypes relevant to both race and gender pose challenges to these students. They must overcome these challenges in order to excel within the various and changing environments they move through on a daily basis (hooks, 1981, 1994). Within the context of social justice, this dissertation provides insight into the role that language and literacy practices play to help enable the positive and affirming development of self-hood of African American college freshmen. …

33rd Annual African American Commencement, 2015, San Jose State University, Associated Students

African American Commencement

33rd Annual African American Commencement

"Black Grad: Striving Today to Create a Better Tomorrow." The 2015 African American Commencement ceremony was held on Friday, May 22, 2015 in the Student Union Ballroom at San Jose State University.

Experiences Of African American Female First Generation College Students, Ashley Green

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenology study was to gain a better understanding of the experiences of African American, female, first generation college students attending a large, predominantly White research university and to understand what motivates them. The major research question guiding this study was: How do African American, female, first generation college students (in good academic standing) describe their college experience? The researcher asked the participants to discuss their challenges, how they responded to challenges, sources of motivation, and factors that contributed to their success in college.

Through individual, face to face, interviews with 10 African American, female, FGC …

Assessing Reconstruction: Did The South Undergo Revolutionary Change?, Lauren H. Sobotka

Student Publications

With the end of the Civil War, came a number of unanswered questions Reconstruction would attempt to answer for the South. While the South underwent economic, political and social changes for a short period, old traditions continued to persist resulting in racist sentiment.

Link Racial Past To The Present, Jill Ogline Titus

Civil War Institute Faculty Publications

Americans have been putting a great deal of energy into commemorating the 50th anniversary of some of the key moments of the civil rights movement. This burst of memorialization has inspired one new museum in Atlanta and the redesign of another in Memphis. The Smithsonian and Library of Congress are launching a new oral-history initiative, and films like Selma bring the movement to life for those who rarely read a history book or visit a museum.

This year brings more anniversaries: the Selma-to-Montgomery March, the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and the Watts rebellion. And the commemorative stakes are …

Art, Artifact, Archive: African American Experiences In The Nineteenth Century, Shannon Egan, Lauren H. Roedner, Diane Brennan, Maura B. Conley, Abigail B. Conner, Nicole A. Conte, Victoria Perez-Zetune, Savannah Rose, Kaylyn L. Sawyer, Caroline M. Wood, Zoe C. Yeoh

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Angelo Scarlato’s extraordinary and vast collection of art and artifacts related to the Civil War, and specifically to the Battle of Gettysburg, the United States Colored Troops, slavery and the African American struggle for emancipation, citizenship and freedom has proved to be an extraordinary resource for Gettysburg College students. The 2012-14 exhibition in Musselman Library’s Special Collections, curated by Lauren Roedner ’13, entitled Slaves, Soldiers, Citizens: African American Artifacts of the Civil War Era and its corresponding catalogue provided a powerful and comprehensive historical narrative of the period.

This fall, students in my course at Gettysburg College “Art and Public …

The Experiences Of Black American Older Adults Managing Pain: A Nursing Ethnography, Sheria Grice Robinson

Wayne State University Dissertations

Introduction: Pain can negatively affect quality of life for Black elders. They are less likely to report pain concerns and have voiced pain needs adequately met. To better understand the pain management experiences and concerns of Black elders, an ethnographic study was completed within an urban, low-income, elder housing facility. Methods: 106 participants completed a questionnaire comprised of a demographic tool, the PROMIS Global Health Scale (PROMIS), the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI), and the Psychological Stress Measure (PSM-9). Additionally, participant observation, informal interviews, and 20 formal recorded interviews with individuals identified as having pain were completed. Qualitative and frequency analysis …

Learning The Fighting Game: Black Americans And The First World War, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The experience of African American veterans of the First World War is most often cast through the bloody lens of the Red Summer of 1919, when racial violence and lynchings reached record highs across the nation as black veterans returned from the global conflict to find Jim Crow justice firmly entrenched in a white supremacist nation. This narrative casts black veterans in a deeply ironic light, a lost generation even more cruelly mistreated than the larger mythological Lost Generation of the Great War. This narrative, however, badly abuses hindsight and clouds larger issues of black activism and organization during and …

A Mixed Method Study Of Diagnostic And Adaptive Functioning Challenges In African American Preschool-Aged Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Douglene Jackson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are known to experience performance and participation challenges, with early diagnosis being critical for improved outcomes. Children from ethnic minority backgrounds tend to receive their diagnoses later, even when symptomatology is similar. This mixed methods study explored symptom severity, functional difficulties, and age at diagnosis for ASD and to describe the functional challenges encountered by preschool-aged children with ASD of African American descent. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health along with the Model of Human Occupation were the theories used for this study to conceptualize functional challenges and other potential factors. Research …

The Impact Of Self-Imposed Barriers On African Americans Successes, Pennie L. Murray

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Researchers and economists have argued that the economic and social stagnation of African Americans is the result of their lack of self-confidence, initiative, and commitment toward their own advancement. This qualitative study examined whether historical conditioning and personal experiences have created a hypersensitivity in this population to events triggering behaviors that mirror the success fearing personality when seeking social, economic, and political advancement. It used Zuckerman and Allison's fear of success scale to identify the range of success fearing in 30 African American men and women aged 35 years or more; this group was also interviewed regarding their lived experiences …

Quality-Of-Life Indicators For African American And European American Long-Term Survivors Of Early-Stage Breast Cancer, Cher De Rossiter

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This meta-analysis investigated the difference in perceptions of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among long-term early-stage breast cancer survivors (BCS). The comparison was between African American and European American women. Initial pilot searches suggested that enough studies existed for a meaningful meta-analysis of a BCS population at least 5 years post diagnosis. Only studies using the outcome measure HRQOL were included in the study; this yielded an initial sample of 212 study reports, with 56 reports entering the coding phase of the process. African American women were grossly underrepresented in this set of studies in comparison to the overall breast …

A Cross-Cultural Qualitative Study: The Differences In Attitudes And Opinions On Advance Care Planning Among African, Caucasian, And Latino Americans, Jennifer Sims

International ResearchScape Journal

The purpose of this study is to identify African American and Latino Americans’ beliefs and attitudes about advance care planning (ACP) and compare these with beliefs held by Caucasian Americans. The objectives are to identify if there are differences in opinions between racial groups and to provide relevant information for health and social service providers. African American and Latino American participants in this study indicated many factors that affect their hesitation to utilize ACP services: spiritual and religious beliefs; family caregiving; and lack of knowledge about ACP services. Implications for practice include providing easy-to-understand information about ACP to clients of …

The Effect Of Marriage Verses Cohabitation On Sexual Communication In Latino, African American, And Caucasian Adults, Erin Koosed, Danielle Mahaffey, Mckenzie Rand, Elizabeth Wagner, Dr. Heesoon Lee

International ResearchScape Journal

This study focuses on the effect of communication on sexual relationship satisfaction when comparing cohabiting couples with married couples. Communication is an important part of relational and sexual satisfaction. Research was conducted using scholarly journal articles and quantitative data from questionnaires. Fifty-four questionnaires were completed by males and females that were at least forty years, married or cohabitating, and identified as Latino, African American, or Caucasian. The data from the questionnaires found that both heterosexual and homosexual couples in domestic partnerships had better sexual communication than those who were married. People from diverse backgrounds can relate to the data collected …

'She Shall Not Be Moved': Black Women's Spiritual Practice In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, And Home, Rondrea Danielle Mathis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

‘She Shall Not Be Moved’: Black Women’s Spiritual Practice in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, and Home argues that from The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s debut novel, to her 2012 novel, Home, Morrison brings her female characters to voice, autonomy, and personal divinity through unconventional spiritual work. The project addresses the history of Black women’s activist and spiritual work, Toni Morrison’s engagement with unconventional spiritual practice, and closes with a personal interrogation of the author’s connection to Black women’s spiritual practice.