Africana Studies Commons^™

Alma W. Thomas: “The Marionette Show As A Correlating Activity In The Public Schools”, Jonathan Frederick Walz

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

The wider world primarily knows Alma W. Thomas as an African American visual artist who, despite the challenges of race, gender, and age, produced a coherent body of brightly colored nature-based abstractions that made her world famous in the late 1970s. What remains virtually unknown, however, is the artist’s involvement with puppet theater and related professional activities. During the summers of 1925, 1930, and 1934, Thomas studied at Columbia University’s Teachers College, where she earned an M.A. in arts education; post-graduate coursework with acknowledged marionette expert Tony Sarg followed. The pedagogical theories of John Dewey, who taught at Columbia 1905–1930, …

Teeth, Tau Bennett

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

Brooklyn-based puppeteer Tau Bennett’s shooting script for a television puppet comedy employs dark humor and surreal slapstick to tell the story of a man whose offhand wish to lose his “pesky teeth” becomes unfortunately true, thanks to larger-than-life forces, two bumbling hoodlums, and a boss looking for teeth.

Puppetry And Inside Change, Al Tony Simon, Tychist Baker

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

Al Tony Simon and Tychist Baker describe their experiences as formerly incarcerated individuals, and their work with puppetry through the group Inside Change. Simon became involved in theater in prison, and then with prison activism through RAPP (Release Aging People from Prison), and Milk Not Jails’ efforts to reform New York State parole boards. Great Small Works theater company introduced Simon to puppetry, which he has used in his work with young people in youth detention centers, schools, and at-risk communities through the One Foot In and One Foot Out program, and later the creation of Inside Change. During his …

Shape-Shifter, Tarish Pipkins

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

Tarish Pipkins’s early experiences with the “shape-shifting beast” of racism as he grew up near Pittsburgh, and later his growing awareness of African American history, have influenced his poetry, visual art, and puppetry: a “weapon of mass destruction to fight the beast.” His work with puppets and special-needs children led him to create larger puppet productions such as Just Another Lynching and 5P1N0K10: The Android Who Wants to be Real b boy, which allow him to “[fight] back using puppets as my swords.”

Five-Star Review And Other Responses, Sheila Gaskins, Tau Bennett, Nate Puppets, Akbar Imhotep

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

Living Objects Festival and Symposium attendees Sheila Gaskins, Tau Bennett, Nate Puppets, and Akbar Imhotep offer their appreciation of the events, illustrated with photographs by Gaskins.

The New White Moderate: Bearing Witness To The Differend Of Race, Ethan T. Ashley

Honors Theses

As Frantz Fanon demonstrates in his text, Black Skin, White Masks, Sartrean existentialism fails to account for differences in racialized existence. Quite simply, the notion that “existence precedes essence” is reversed in the case of the black subject; he/she is living in a world that has rendered the black subject subservient to a predetermined essence. Ultimately, the fact that the white subject exists and may freely determine his/her essence while the black subject may not further demonstrates this gap or a chasm between black and white subjects that calls for further examination. In the first chapter, I will use …

Race In The Galactic Age : Sankofa, Afrofuturism, Whiteness And Whitley Strieber, Clifton Zeno Johnson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Octavia Butler asked if black skin was so disruptive a force that the mere presence of it alters a story? In a post-colonial era, skin color remains a polarizing topic. While humans are still redefining perceptions about race, people across planet earth are opening up to the possibility of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. This paper explores how the acknowledgment of a galactic presence would transform perceptions of whiteness. The experiences of the best-selling author and proclaimed contactee, Whitley Strieber, are used as case studies to analyze if Amero-European ingrained bias toward melanin would influence the western world’s interactions …

The Diversion Of Diversity: Uncovering The Antiblackness Of Diversity Initiatives, M. Jordan Alexander

Honors Theses

In more recent years, Diversity has been a driving force in universities across the country. As underrepresented groups in the United States have gained more traction in the political and legal realms, they have gained the agency and the ability to advocate for their inclusion in institutions and structures that previously denied their access. This gaining of agency within these public realms is what has fueled higher education institutions across the country to really push for diversity, in both their faculty and student populations. The ideology behind this push is multiculturalism or multiracialism; this idea by its premise, the inclusion …

The Homecoming Of The Negro Spirit: Black Spiritual Intelligence As A Structural Form Of Intelligence, Quincy Brown

CMC Senior Theses

In Is Spirituality an Intelligence? Motivation, Cognition, and the concern of Psychology of Ultimate Concern, Robert Emmons develops a case for spirituality as a form of intelligence. His thesis claims that spiritual intelligence is a “set of capacities and abilities that enable people to solve problems and attain goals in their everyday lives”: “the capacity for transcendence; the ability to enter into heightened spiritual states of consciousness; the ability to invest everyday activities, events, and relationships with a sense of the sacred; the ability to utilize spiritual resources to solve problems in living; and the capacity to engage …

Internalized Racism: Biases Children And Adults Hold, Daniela G. Gonzales

Student Publications

Due to one’s surroundings, many African American children have internalized these racial biases without them without consciously being aware of it. Hence, this paper highlights various studies that have done previous research on the racial biases children hold like the pioneering study, the Clark doll experiment of 1947. Furthermore, this paper elaborates on measurements of how children have internalized these biases along with the influence adults play on the lives of these children. Therefore, I expand on the many implications these biases have on the lives of African American children and suggest possible approaches to aid in the reduction of …

Seeking Representations Of Afrocentric Beauty: A Comparative Content Analysis Of Advertisements In Essence Magazine, Roy Phillips Jr.

Journalism Undergraduate Honors Theses

This comparative content analysis will investigate how African American women are depicted in Essence magazine advertisements and seeks to answer the research question: Are the characteristics of advertisements in Essence magazines significantly different when under complete corporate ownership compared to being under primarily African American ownership? The specific goal is to examine the extent to which Afrocentric or Eurocentric depictions are being reinforced, if at all, and to observe if depictions of African American women are shifting or are immobile. To do this, the study will compare advertisements in Essence magazines in 2001, when the magazine was 51 percent Black-owned, …

Examining The Strategies Of Formation And Action Among Social Movements: A Comparison Of The Civil Rights Movement And Black Lives Matter, Hailee Saxton

Political Science Theses and Capstones

In today’s tumultuous political landscape, the question of what makes an effective social movement? is often asked. This can be a complicated question to answer as social movements vary greatly across racial, ethnic, economic, and political boundaries. Therefore, I am conducting a case comparison of two widely-known socio-political organizations, the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter. In this comparison I will examine whether or not they truly fit the definition of a social movement, look at the strategies of action that have or could prove successful in enacting long-standing socio-political change, and make recommendations on how movements could continue …

Break Beats In The Bronx: Rediscovering Hip-Hop’S Early Years (Book Review), Matthew Oware

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Break Beats in the Bronx: Rediscovering Hip-Hop’s Early Years, by Joseph C. Ewoodzie, University of North Carolina Press, 2017, https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469632759/break-beats-in-the-bronx/.

Neutral Ground Or Battleground? Hidden History, Tourism, And Spatial (In)Justice In The New Orleans French Quarter, Lynnell L. Thomas

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

In 2017, the city of New Orleans removed four monuments that paid homage to the city’s Confederate past. The removal came after contentious public debate and decades of intermittent grassroots protests. Despite the public process, details about the removal were closely guarded in the wake of death threats, vandalism, lawsuits, and organized resistance by monument supporters. Workers hired to dismantle the monuments did so surreptitiously under the cloak of darkness, protected by a heavy police presence, with their faces covered to conceal their identities. The divisiveness of this debate and the removal lay bare the contestation over public space, historical …

Queering Sugar: Kara Walker’S Sugar Sphinx And The Intractability Of Black Female Sexuality, Amber Jamilla Musser

Publications and Research

This essay analyzes the controversy surrounding artist Kara Walker’s 2014 installation, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, to unpack the pleasures and dangers that subtend discussions of black female sexuality. What Walker announced as a tribute to the labor of brown and black bodies produced myriad conversations about pleasure, danger, and black female sexuality. Most art critics argued that the piece reclaimed black female agency; many visitors criticized the work (and the public response to it) as disrespectful and problematic. In the essay, I argue that both of these responses highlight the difficulty of talking about black female …

Agency And Afro-Pessimism: Richard Wright And Ayi Kwei Armah, Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah

Honors Scholar Theses

Various scholars in Ethnic Studies have made the claim that people of color in the United States have constituted a colony within. That is to say, by virtue of the effects of institutional racism racialized bodies in the United States have experienced a form of colonialism unique to the American context. Examining the connections between forms of subjectivity in the United States and in Africa, this paper attempts to extend the concepts “social life” and “social death” to the literature of continental Africa. Through a close reading of Ayi Kwei Armah’s “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born,” and Richard …

An Introduction To African-Centered Sociology: Worldview, Methodology And Social Theory, Karanja Keita Carroll

Publications and Research

Current advances in Africana (Black) Studies utilize an African-centered conceptual framework in the study of Africana life, history, and culture. This conceptual framework has been utilized and expanded on by those developing scholarship in the sub-discipline areas of Africana Studies, including African-centered psychology, history, and literature. However, to date the articulation of an African-centered sociology, grounded in an African-centered conceptual framework, has not developed; neither has it occurred for African-centered sociology as a sub-discipline of Africana Studies, a sub-discipline of traditional sociology, or as a stand-alone discipline, itself. After a review of the worldview concept and framework and an analysis …

On The Impossibilities Of A Post-Racist America In The Obama Era, Karanja Keita Carroll

Publications and Research

This chapter interrogates the reality of racism and white supremacy in what some today refer to as “the Obama era” and what others regard as evidence of a “post-racist America.” By utilizing an African-centered conceptual framework, centering on culture and worldview, this discourse constitutes a critical examination of the impossibilities of a post-racist America by investigating the lived experiences of African-descended people and other communities of color. Through this analysis, it will be evident that while we may be in “the Obama era,” we are far from a post-racist society. Thus, discussions of post-racism are assessed as conceptual masks used …

Teaching And Pedagogy In Africana Studies: Implications Of An African Worldview, Karanja Keita Carroll

Publications and Research

The African worldview has informed much of the African centered scholarship produced within contemporary Africana/Black Studies. In doing so, the African worldview has functioned as the methodological foundation for the production, interpretation and dissemination of knowledge related to people of African ancestry. Africana Studies instructors and professors can also utilize the philosophical assumptions that inform the African worldview to create and recreate dynamic, culturally centered teaching practices. Given the central role of teaching at the undergraduate level within the discipline of Africana Studies it is crucial that instructors and professors concentrate on the development of discipline-specific pedagogical practices. This essay …

Negrocity: An Interview With Greg Tate, Camille Goodison

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

\African-Centered Psychology, Education And The Liberation Of African Minds: Notes On The Psycho-Cultural Justification For Reparations, Karanja Keita Carroll, Dereef F. Jamison

Publications and Research

One means through which reparations can be provided to communities of African descent within America is through the creation and institutionalization of culturally enriching after-school programming, African-centered Saturday schools and independent Black educational institutions. Rather than looking to reparations as merely financial compensation for the descendants of the formerly enslaved, we can look to reparations as they relate to the building of educational infrastructures that will impact future generations of African descendants in America. This essay outlines the psychological and epistemological consequences of miseducation that many students of African descent experience within the Eurocentrically orientated education institutions they attend; The …

A History Of Art In Africa, Monica Blackmun Visonà, Robin Poynor, Herbert M. Cole

Art and Visual Studies Textbook Gallery

This is an adapted version of the second edition of A History of Art in Africa, published in 2008 by Pearson/Prentice Hall. It has been scanned and digitized with the original graphics and illustrations redacted for Monica Blackmun Visonà, who now holds copyright to the entire text. The text is complete, and chapters 1-5 include thumbnails with weblinks to alternate illustrations. Dr. Visonà is preparing a third edition of A History of Art in Africa for University of Michigan Publishing Services, which will appear both online and in print. As this textbook remains the most comprehensive art historical survey of …

“Sons Of Adam”: Text, Context, And The Early Modern African Subject, Herman L. Bennett

Publications and Research

Seeking to dislodge the prism that a singular political practice—represented as the story from savage to slave—informed the slave trade, this essay points to a distinct genealogy shaping the earliest encounters between Europeans and Africans.

George Bush Of Tumwater: Founder Of The First American Colony On Puget Sound, Darrell Millner

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

A biography of pioneer George Washington Bush is presented. A free mulatto, information on Bush's childhood and birth date are uncertain. Believed to have been raised in Pennsylvania and educated under Quaker influence, Bush was literate and worked in the cattle business before moving to Oregon with his wife and children in 1844. Bush encountered various forms of racism, but was not deterred by pioneer life and by 1850 the family farm in the Tumwater, Washington area was thriving.

A Research Note: Race, Slavery, And The Ambiguity Of Corporate Consciousness, Herman L. Bennett

Publications and Research

In 1769, as he languished in Córdoba's prison, Diego Antonio Macute seethed. He was not alone. Fifteen of his compatriots shared his sentiments as they confronted their re-enslavement. Recent events painfully reminded them that racial consciousness had limits: their maroon allies, after all, had returned them to their former masters.

An Appeal In Favor Of That Class Of Americans Called Africans, Lydia Maria Child, Paul Royster (Editor)

Electronic Texts in American Studies

The roots of white supremacy lie in the institution of negro slavery. From the 15th through the 19th century, white Europeans trafficked in abducted and enslaved Africans and justified the practice with excuses that seemed somehow to reconcile the injustice with their professed Christianity. The United States was neither the first nor the last nation to abolish slavery, but its proclaimed principles of freedom and equality were made ironic by the nation’s reluctance to extend recognition to all Americans.

“Americans” is what Mrs. Child calls those fellow countrymen of African ancestry; citizenship and equality are what she proposed beyond simple …