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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Acts Of Subjugation And Repatriation Of Africa And Its People Through The Viewfinder, Mariah Morales
The Acts Of Subjugation And Repatriation Of Africa And Its People Through The Viewfinder, Mariah Morales
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
No abstract provided.
Monuments, Movements, & Memory: The Visual And Spatial Implications Of The Shooting At Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Megan G. Zembower
Monuments, Movements, & Memory: The Visual And Spatial Implications Of The Shooting At Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Megan G. Zembower
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
This paper focuses on the dichotomous relationship of race relations and visual culture in the American South, with a particular focus on the shooting of nine black Americans at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015 by Caucasian South Carolinian Dylann Roof. Prior to the shooting, Roof posted images of himself posed in front of various Confederate landmarks in South Carolina to online social media platforms. Using these images as evidence, I contend that Roof’s racist motivation for the crime was, in part, fostered by the surrounding environment that memorializes fallen Confederate soldiers …
Vohou-Vohou: A Search For Post-Colonial Cultural Identity In Cote D’Ivoire, Olivia Keefer
Vohou-Vohou: A Search For Post-Colonial Cultural Identity In Cote D’Ivoire, Olivia Keefer
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
This paper addresses the Vohou-Vohou movement (1970s-1980s) in Cote d’Ivoire. Through an explanation of the region’s history, the paper brings to light the motivations of the movement and its founders. The work of Youssouf Bath, Théodore Koudougnon, and Kra Nguessan are the focus of this paper to represent the movement’s style, formation, and impact on Cote d’Ivoire culture. Vohou-Vohou developed a decade after Cote d’Ivoire gained independence from French colonial control, and the movement became an inward return to local culture. The artists had an interest in rejecting the West. A visual representation of the rejection is seen through Vohou-Vohou …
Painting Photographs: Absence On Mohammed Mahmoud Street, Kirsten Stricker
Painting Photographs: Absence On Mohammed Mahmoud Street, Kirsten Stricker
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
The Egyptian Revolution prompted an outpouring of art. It filled the streets of Cairo, a city that had lacked any street art prior to the revolution, with large murals and art of every kind. Ammar Abo Bakr says that his massive murals are not art — they are news. His works are a protest against the censorship and selective reporting of the mainstream media. Bakr is best known for his large mural on Mohammed Mahmoud Street near Tahrir Square, Cairo. The mural is massive and contains many elements. One element consists of paintings of mothers holding photographs of their children …
Rethinking The "Anonymous:" Simeon Agbetuyi And The Yoruba Example, Caroline Bastian
Rethinking The "Anonymous:" Simeon Agbetuyi And The Yoruba Example, Caroline Bastian
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
In looking at “Traditional” and “Contemporary” African Art, it is clear Western culture still struggles with recognition of the individual African artist. For example, most museum exhibitions displaying local or more continent-based African art still tend to embody a flawed sense of “traditional” art created by a culture rather than an individual. In contrast, contemporary African art stresses the importance of the singular artist, their personal style, historical context, and cultural motivation. Part of the problem stems from colonialism, when many Western “collectors” seized any art they deemed valuable and “exotic,” taking it away from context leaving behind all information …
The Essence Of Bogolanfini: Thinking About Ethical Design With African Inspiration, Sierra N. Bailey-Van Kuren
The Essence Of Bogolanfini: Thinking About Ethical Design With African Inspiration, Sierra N. Bailey-Van Kuren
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
Bogolanfini are intricately designed textiles created by Bamana women in Mali. The cloths are created through a natural process, producing rich designs and motifs that address stories, narratives, female-specific ideas or relate to historical events. Each textile is hand made for a particular individual and given to her as she enters adulthood, an event marked by puberty and clitoridectomy. During this time, the cloth is used to absorb blood from the operation, a process transferring the woman’s spirit into the bogolanfini. As she progresses through life, the utility of her bogolanfini extends to absorbing her life-blood during menstruation, first intercourse …
African Mask Display In Context, Elise C. Aronson
African Mask Display In Context, Elise C. Aronson
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
African masquerade is deeply interconnected with the community in which it performs. However, in Western-based exhibition display, the mask becomes the sole object of scrutiny and interest, decontextualizing it from its holistic dimension and multi-media interface. In fact, much of masquerade’s cultural significance is lost if the dynamic multimedia display of which the mask is part becomes alienated from its holistic context, reducing it to a mere static object hung on a wall. The argument can be raised, to mount a mask on a white wall or behind glass, especially grouped among other masks from Africa, as many museums do, …
Renee Green: Combination Artist, Cail P. Lininger
Renee Green: Combination Artist, Cail P. Lininger
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
Renée Green, a combination artist, engages viewers in multi-faceted and diverse topics without directly addressing the central theme. In Partially Buried In Three Parts (1991-1996), Green utilizes films shot in a “home-movie” fashion and site-specific archiving to curate complex dialogues across three different locations: Kent State in 1991, exploring the shootings in 1970 and Robert Smithson’s installation, Partially Buried Woodshed; Germany and the United States and what it means to be a displaced national undergoing culture shock; and Korea, in war and peace. Green originally displayed all three in an installation designed to invoke feelings of nostalgia amidst confusion regarding …
Mediated Sankarism: Re-Inventing A Historical Figure To Reimagine A Future, Lassane Ouedraogo
Mediated Sankarism: Re-Inventing A Historical Figure To Reimagine A Future, Lassane Ouedraogo
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
Thomas Sankara has contributed significantly to the formation of the modern national identity of post-independent Burkina Faso before his assassination in 1987. This essay used discourse analysis to examine the emergence of Thomas Sankara’s ideology also known as Sankarism (and his praxis?) in the Burkinabe public discourse. In the current socio-political context of a nascent democracy characterized by the emergence of active civil society movements and multiple political factions contesting the right to govern and claiming the capacity to provide a new direction to a country caught up amid local and global issues, the reinvention and re-appropriation of Sankarism call …
Media In The Murid World: Analysis Of Inscribed Faith And Religious Identity In Murid Agencies’ Media Approach, Macodou Fall
Media In The Murid World: Analysis Of Inscribed Faith And Religious Identity In Murid Agencies’ Media Approach, Macodou Fall
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
Previous studies about Muridiyya have mostly focused on the economic and political influences of the Senegalese Sufi Islamic Brotherhood founded by Shaykh Amadu Bamba at the end of 19th century. At the beginning, Muridiyya was a reactive force to colonialism and it aimed to propose alternatives to Western cultural and economic domination. However, the rapid growth of Muridiyya was possible via the creation of decentralized Murid organizations and groups called dahiras (religious associations). Prior to the rise of dahiras, Murid’s religious ideology spread throughout daaras (Quranic schools), which intended to initiate Murid talibes (disciples) to Islam and the …
What To Keep, What To Let Go: The Case Of Indians From Nyasaland, Debra Nicholson
What To Keep, What To Let Go: The Case Of Indians From Nyasaland, Debra Nicholson
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
This paper examines how identity may be constructed in the case of multiple transnational migrations within just a couple of generations, using an example (or examples) of immigrants from India to Nyasaland (present-day Malawi) to Great Britain to Canada.
What happens to your sense of identity when your Indian ancestors emigrate to Nyasaland, you grow up there, but around 1964, soon after independence from Great Britain, all Indians, including you and your family, are deported from your homeland of Nyasaland?
In one case study analyzed in this paper, a Nyasa Catholic woman of Indian descent first travels to Great Britain …
The African Immigrant Experience In France According To "La Haine", Samantha B. Weiss
The African Immigrant Experience In France According To "La Haine", Samantha B. Weiss
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
Le Haine depicts the fictional experiences of three immigrants to France, each with a different background, but a similar fate. The title, which translates to "hate" sets the tone for the movie, which is quick to explain its motives – depicting the life of a French migrant as a hopeless, fruitless one. Though the African character - his home nation never named - can speak perfect French and even attempts to better the lives of those around him, his efforts are met with violence, hatred, resistance, and an anti-immigrant mentality. By reading the conflicts of the movie in reference to …
Fighting The Lion: Nationalist Masculinity In Sam Nujoma's Autobiography, Kelly J. Fulkerson Dikuua
Fighting The Lion: Nationalist Masculinity In Sam Nujoma's Autobiography, Kelly J. Fulkerson Dikuua
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
Dr. Samuel Nujoma’s autobiography, Where Others Wavered: My Life in SWAPO and My Participation in the Liberation Struggle, documents his life as a pivotal figure in the Namibian war for independence leading to his tenure as the first president of Namibia (1990-2005). Nujoma, known as the “Founding Father” of Namibia, occupies a larger-than-life sphere within the public imagination through monuments, public photographs, placards and street names. Nujoma’s autobiography prescribes a certain type of national citizenship that details a specific construction of masculinity for Namibian men. This paper analyzes his autobiography, arguing that Nujoma constructs a hegemonic masculinity based on four …
Andrew Jackson And Harriet Tubman: A Monstrous Intimacy, Sheneese Thompson
Andrew Jackson And Harriet Tubman: A Monstrous Intimacy, Sheneese Thompson
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
In the wake of the announcement of Harriet Tubman joining Andrew Jackson on the back of the twenty-dollar bill, as well as the recent election of Donald Trump as the nation’s 45th president, this paper employs Christina Sharpe’s notion of monstrous intimacies to assert that the coupling of the two on the bill reinscribes the monstrosity of the intimate encounters between the enslaved and their masters, even though Jackson did not own Tubman herself. Further, the appropriation of Tubman’s image and the revisionist underpinnings of her inclusion on money, once offered for her bounty, serves no other purpose than …
Identity Performance: African-Caribbean Artists As Creators Of Cultural Community, Jessica Allison
Identity Performance: African-Caribbean Artists As Creators Of Cultural Community, Jessica Allison
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
Identity performance is an aspect of everyday life and can be seen in an individual's daily routines, or even the way they present themselves in specific social situations. These performances of identity can also be displayed in the actions one puts in to a piece of art. In African-Caribbean societies artists have become aware of the importance identity holds for their community and many of them put these ideas in to their artwork. The conscious decisions that these artists make in the creation and display of their artworks act as performances of an identity that they are attempting to convey. …
Theories Of Space And Place In Abstract Caribbean Art, Shelby Miller
Theories Of Space And Place In Abstract Caribbean Art, Shelby Miller
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
How can one define the concepts of space and place and further translate those theories to the Caribbean region? Through abstract modes of representation, artists from these islands can shed light on these concepts in their work. Involute theories can be discussed in order to illuminate the larger Caribbean space and all of its components in abstract art. The trialectics of space theory deals with three important factors that include the physical, cognitive, and experienced space. All three of these aspects can be displayed in abstract artwork from this region. By analyzing this theory, one can understand why Caribbean artists …
African Resistance To European Colonial Aggression: An Assessment, Nigel Tussing
African Resistance To European Colonial Aggression: An Assessment, Nigel Tussing
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
When observing African resistance to colonialism one plainly sees that there was quite a bit of non-military resistance. However, military resistance played a large role in helping the cause of the native people of Africa. It had success such as Ethiopia’s ability to remain independent and the Chilembwe insurrection; it also had its failures such as lack of technology and lack of unity. Through careful examination of these ideas we can further understand the success and failure of African military resistance to colonialism.
Impact Of Colonialism On Contemporary African Art, Jayna Clemens
Impact Of Colonialism On Contemporary African Art, Jayna Clemens
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” – Michael Crichton
Studying history provides insight and explanations for what is present in today’s society. Colonization is not the only piece of Africa’s history, but it is a major contributor. Studying the history of Africa, pre and post colonialism, provides explanations for how Africa arrived at its present and where it is headed in the future. Colonization had a major impact on Africa’s culture and history, including contemporary African art. Contemporary African art, including description, materials, …
European Colonialism And The Formation Of New African Identity, Isha Nabay
European Colonialism And The Formation Of New African Identity, Isha Nabay
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
European colonialism left a devastating effects on Africa. The exploitation of the vast continent began with the slave trade which robbed Africa millions of people. The abolition of the slave trade witnessed the beginning of legitimate trade, which, in turn ushered in direct European invasion, conquest and establishment of colonial rule in Africa. Under colonialism, human rights were extensively violated for decades, African kings and chiefs lost their power to European rulers who imposed their own laws and customs to keep the people of the land degraded and exploited. Some high points of European influence include the introduction of Christianity …
European Christian Evangelism And Cultural Erasure In Colonial Africa, Jessica Ricker
European Christian Evangelism And Cultural Erasure In Colonial Africa, Jessica Ricker
Africana Studies Student Research Conference
It is often argued that the colonization of the African continent in the 19th and 20th century was only made possible through the use of professional military infiltration. While the use of a professional military force is one of the ways in which Europeans colonized African territories, it is not the only way. In addition to military force, many Europeans utilized Christian evangelism and cultural erasure as a means of pacification. Many arguments made about colonialism in Africa point to evangelism and cultural erasure as goals of European imperialism, while other arguments boast that the European powers only …