Africana Studies Commons^™

Including Black Farmers, Excluding Pests: Perspectives On Participation In The Cooperative Extension Service, Briana Bazile

Theses and Dissertations--Entomology

In recent years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has faced renewed scrutiny for documented discrimination against Black farmers, yet far less attention has focused on its century-old partner in public service delivery, the Cooperative Extension Service (CES). This gap is especially notable considering 1) federal parity mandates extant since 1972 in response to significant disparities between Black and White constituents and staff,2) public commitments to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in 2020 and, 3) the contributions of Black leaders at the origins of CES, at Tuskegee University in the late nineteenth century. Using the Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service (KYCES) as a …

“Hard To Rememeber, Then Hard To Forget:” A Qualitative Exploration Into The Attitudes And Lived Experiences Of Black People With Black Names, Destin L. Mizelle

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Naming practices within the Black American community are vibrant and deeply rooted in cultural traditions and shared values. Much like other ethnic groups, these names tell stories, reflect heritage, and connect individuals to their community, making each choice meaningful and significant. However, due to the systemic effects of anti-Blackness, Black Americans often have a complex relationship with their names. While previous research has primarily utilized quantitative methodologies focusing on the negative associations and consequences of having a Black name, this study aims to amplify the voices of Black people who possess Black names. Using reflexive thematic analysis, this qualitative study …

Libraries And Changing Humanities Fields, Peter Hesseldenz

2024 R&I Day

A description of a project which explores how Humanities fields are changing as they grapple with diversity and inclusion issues, focusing particularly on curricula and teaching methods. The project also seeks to understand how well libraries are working with and supporting these changes with particular emphasis on the role of Academic Liaisons.

Mc Means Mentor The Child: Examining School-Based Hip-Hop Clubs For Youth Empowerment, Leadership Development, And Capacity For Change, Daniel Wolford

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

This dissertation examined the relationship between students in a school-based hip-hop club and their ability to develop leadership capabilities through club activities. This study followed a hip-hop club at an urban high school in the Midwest to better understand how hip-hop spaces impact youth participants. The participants included four current members of the club and three alums, all of whom were African American. This study used qualitative methods through heuristic inquiry to understand the phenomenon of hip-hop clubs. Data collection methods included session notes, musical creations, semi-structured interviews, and a Microsoft Teams group chat. Additional heuristic data was collected through …

The Movie Is On!: Pragmatics Of The Video Joker In Who Killed Captain Alex?, Hunter Hulett

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

The film Who Killed Captain Alex? (WKCA) is a Ugandan film that provides an opportunity to examine the use of pragmatic and specifically deictic features to study the manipulation of borders between the film and reality. A commentator called the Video Joker (VJ) is the film’s deictic center, constantly destabilizing deictic relations and orienting the internal and external pragmatics of the film around themself. As the film’s ultimate pragmatic force, they occupy a position blurring diegesis and non-diegesis due to originating as real-time film commentators before being edited into the text. In this unique position, they shift the deixis’s organization …

Confronting Yanqui Racismo: The Cuban Revolution And The (R)Evolutionary Radicalization Of Amiri Baraka, Ariane Ribeiro Santana

Theses and Dissertations--History

This study examined the July 1960 trip to Cuba financed by the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the Cuban cultural center Casa de las Américas, in which the Black poet and activist Amiri Baraka took part. Diving into his experiences in Cuba and his later writings, it is possible to conceive of diaspora as an interaction that is based not only on race, but on points of common oppression, as seen between Baraka and the African American delegation he joined in 1960 and the Cuban society he engaged with during the trip. This work therefore furthers the field of …

"Not Just Whites In Appalachia": The Black Appalachian Commission, Regional Black Power Politics, And The War On Poverty, 1965-1975, Jillean Mccommons

Theses and Dissertations--History

During the Black Power era of the late 1960s and 1970s, Black activists in Appalachia used the opening of the War on Poverty to wage a regional war against institutional and environmental racism. Through the Black Appalachian Commission, a grassroots organization created in 1969, Black activists worked to expose racism in local and federal policy as the root cause of poverty for Black Appalachians, who they argued were the poorest in the region. Their outward self-definition as Black and Appalachian was a political strategy to garner power over resources earmarked for Appalachians. The term “Black Appalachian'' was more than a …

Transforming Social Work Practice And Research: Examining Lived Experiences Of Black Male Veteran Students And Mental Health, Tay Robinson

DSW Capstone Projects

Mental health disparities amongst the African American/Black community are well documented in literature. Throughout history the African American/ Black community have dealt with unethical operating procedures and research studies. This capstone project looks at historical facts, the lack of Black male veteran specific research as it relates to mental health, lived experiences of Black male veteran students with mental health/treatment, and developing culturally appropriate approaches to increasing research and effective practices to better serve this community.

The second chapter and first product of this capstone project is a systematic literature review. This literature review focused on finding literature on African …

“They Did This Work”: Black Activism, Education, And The Rosenwald Rural School-Building Program In Kentucky, Le Datta Denise Grimes

Theses and Dissertations--History

This study examines what Black Kentuckians did on their own behalf to educate themselves in the early twentieth century. I argue that Black Kentuckians’ agency and activism formed the bedrock of the Rosenwald movement in Kentucky. From 1917 to 1932, they built 158 Rosenwald Schools across the Bluegrass by welding together multiple strategies of resistance. Such agitation included voluntarily taxing themselves, waging legal battles, deploying military-style fundraising campaigns, and building institutions to support their schools. Seeking first-class citizenship, they also volunteered labor, donated land, and bought supplies to uplift themselves and their community through education. This work took place against …

John Wesley Work Iii: Arranger, Preserver, And Historian Of African American Traditional Music, Kaylina Madison Crawley

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This study focuses on John Wesley Work III’s life and career in response to the scarcity of existing research and publication devoted to him. To expand the scholarship focused on Work and to deepen the history of African American artistry, this dissertation analyzes his additions to concert repertoire through his arrangements of spirituals, investigates his scholarship, and performance— including his activities as Director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers — and provides a foundation for further analytical study of African- American sacred music. Methodology utilized in this thesis includes construction of a biographical narrative based on primary sources and analysis of …

Chimurenga Chepfungwa: A Liberated Cultural Curriculum For The Madzimbabwe Singer, Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Chimurenga ChePfungwa is the self-liberation of the mind. Education can either be an instrument for liberation or a tool for colonial indoctrination, brainwashing, and enslavement — the European colonization of Africa in the late-nineteenth century and the continent's epic efforts at self-liberation have amply taught us this.

Chimurenga ChePfungwa calls for the centering of ChiVanhu knowledge systems such as Ngano, Tsumo neNziyo. ChiVanhu encapsulates Madzimbabwe indigenous knowledge systems, cosmologies, and ways of being, and this paper insists on the primacy of these ChiVanhu epistemologies for the construction of knowledge and knowing.

Amagama ayadala. Words create. So much of the language …

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 …