Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“In The Skin I’M In…I Represent A Different Version Of What Help Looks Like:” Black Women Sport Psychology Professional’S Experiences In Applied Sport Psychology, Sharon R. Couch

Doctoral Dissertations

Black Feminist Applied Sport Psychology (BFASP) is a culturally inclusive theoretical framework for centering Black women’s experiences in applied sport psychology (Carter et al., 2020; Couch et al., 2022). For the past two decades, (White) Feminist applied sport psychology professionals (FASPPs) described the experiences of Black women as unique but were overlooked in research and participant pools due to the prioritization of White women's and Black male sport experiences. (Carter & Davila, 2017; Carter & Prewitt-White, 2014; Gill, 2020; Hyman et al., 2021). The purpose of this study was to explore the life and work experiences of BASPPs (i.e., faculty, …

Beyond The Boundaries Of Childhood: Northern African American Children's Cultural And Political Resistance, 1780-1861, Crystal L. Webster

Doctoral Dissertations

Notions of childhood as a distinct developmental period of life were concretized during the nineteenth century. Features of children’s lives including innocence, play, and exclusion from labor became markers of ideal childhoods as part of the racialized modernization of childhood. This dissertation uncovers the ways in which modern constructions of childhood attempted to subjugate northern African American children throughout the nineteenth century and highlights the means by which black children and conceptualizations of black childhood became agents and sites of resistance. In doing so, it demonstrates both how African American children experienced age-based forms of subjugation as well as their …

We Are Roses From Our Mothers' Gardens: Black Feminist Visuality In African American Women's Art, Kelli Morgan

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT WE ARE ROSES FROM OUR MOTHERS’ GARDENS: BLACK FEMINIST VISUALITY IN AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN’S ART MAY 2017 KELLI MORGAN, B.A., WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERISTY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Manisha Sinha We Are Roses From Our Mothers' Gardens posits that in differing historical periods African American women visual artists employed various media and create from individual political thoughts, intellectual views, and aesthetic interests to emphasize the innate unification of a Black woman’s race, gender, sexuality, class, and selfhood and how this multifaceted dynamic of Black women’s identity and material reality produces a …

The Afroethnic Impulse And Renewal: African American Transculturations In Afro-Latino Bildung Narratives, 1961 To 2013, Trent Masiki

Doctoral Dissertations

Until now, there has been little sustained critical attention to the way African American literature, history, culture, and politics influence transculturation and ethnoracial identity formation in Afro-Latino bildung narratives. This dissertation addresses that oversight. The Afroethnic Impulse and Renewal: African American Transculturations in Afro-Latino Bildung Narratives, 1961 to 2013, examines a long, but often neglected, history of intercultural affinities and literary encounters between African Americans and Afro-Latinos from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. In The Afroethnic Impulse and Renewal, I explore African American literary and cultural influences in the personal essays, memoirs, and autobiographically inspired fiction of …

Exploring The Experiences Of Black Men As Respondents In University Student Conduct Processes, Brian Arao

Doctoral Dissertations

Student conduct processes in higher education have been studied and theorized extensively from a structural perspective, yielding a wealth of guidance for practitioners on how they can best design and administer disciplinary interventions (e.g., Lancaster & Waryold, 2008b). However, very little published research has focused on students' perceptions of and experiences with student conduct processes, and to what extent these are congruent with the espoused learning goals of student conduct practitioners (Dannells, 1997; Karp & Sacks, 2014; Stimpson & Stimpson, 2008). Among these scant studies, the findings of King (2012) and Karp and Sacks (2014) suggest that Black men may …

“If There Are Men Who Are Afraid To Die, There Are Women Who Are Not”: African American Women's Civil Rights Leadership In Boston, 1920-1975., Julie De Chantal

Doctoral Dissertations

Since the 1980s, narratives surrounding the Boston Busing Crisis focus on South Boston white working-class’s reaction to Judge Arthur W. Garrity's forced desegregation order of 1974. Yet, by analyzing the crises from such narrow perspective, the narratives leave out half of the story. This dissertation challenges these narratives by situating the busing crisis as the culmination of more than half a century of grassroots activism led by Black working-class mothers. By taking action at the neighborhood and the city levels, these mothers succeeded where the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People and the Urban League had failed. …

The Adjustment Of First Year African American Women To Predominately White Institutions: Implications For Best Practices, Maisha Beasley

Doctoral Dissertations

Currently, both scholarly literature and educational practice are lacking depth and scope about the lived experience of African American (AA) female students, and, as a result, they lack effectiveness for this population of students. In particular, they do not address the varying ways AA female students adjust to the university during their first year, the most critical year for student retention and persistence in the college experience (Pike & Kuh, 2005), nor do they recognize how intersectionalities of identities in AA women are salient to successes and challenges at PWIs. This study addresses this gap in the research by not …

An Exploration Of Worship Practices At An African American Church Of Christ, Lamont Ali Francies

Doctoral Dissertations

The identity of the African American Churches of Christ is deeply rooted in the American struggle for racial equality. Without a formal governing body, the Churches of Christ have survived throughout the majority of the 20th century without making an official stance on racial relations. Many leaders in the religious movement have claimed racial immunity but have not addressed the evident division among ethnic lines. This study explored the extent of cultural influence that Caucasian Churches of Christ have on African American congregations.

This study observed these influences and how they shape religious culture and tradition in Black churches. The …

I Am Not My Hair...Or Am I?: Exploring The Minority Swimming Gap, Dawn M. Norwood

Doctoral Dissertations

A review of literature has revealed a dearth of research on leisure swimming patterns of Black females. Black youth, both male and female, have a higher rate of drowning than any other racial/ethnic group in the United States (“Water‐related injuries: Fact sheet”, 2005). Two known studies produced by (Irwin et al., 2009; 2010) examining hair as a constraint to swimming for African American youth produced conflicting results. In order to comprehensively examine hair as a constraint to African American female participation in swimming, the current study adopted a qualitative approach which allowed exploration of the cultural background and experiences of …