Africana Studies Commons^™

“Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways For Institutionalizing Black Theater Pedagogy And Production At Historically White Universities, Artisia Green

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt from the article: "E ku Ose Ogun! At the time of writing, it is a day to venerate the Orisa of iron, mystic vision, destruction, and creation. Ogun, the adaptable, force of will, and road-opening energy, commits to doing difficult but necessary work to bring about transformation..."

Archaeology Under The Blinding Light Of Race, Michael L. Blakey

Arts & Sciences Articles

Racism is defined as a modern system of inequity emergent in Atlantic slavery in which “Whiteness” is born and embedded. This essay describes its transformation. The operation of racist Whiteness in current archaeology and related anthropological practices is demonstrated in the denigration and exclusion of Black voices and the denial of racism and its diverse appropriations afforded the White authorial voice. The story of New York’s African Burial Ground offers a case in point.

Aesthetics Of Oya In Reading, Casting, And Staging Lillian Hellman’S The Children’S Hour, Artisia Green

Arts & Sciences Articles

In the eighteen years between the play’s opening at the Maxine Elliot Theatre and 1952, Lillian Hellman’s 1934 version of The Children’s Hour undergoes a dramaturgical evolution. As Hellman evolved as a playwright and queer woman, she revisits the play several times, altering character attributes and modifying content. In Pentimento: A Book of Portraits (1973), Hellman describes this process of revision as pentimento writing, “later choice[s], [are] a way of seeing and then seeing again” (309). Hellman’s amendments were the inspiration for the conceptual approach used in the 2018 William & Mary Theatre production of The Children’s Hour—a framework …

On Joe And The Burial Place(S) Of The Enslaved At William & Mary, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"It is possible that in the 17th or 18th century W&M opened a burial ground on its 330 acre campus and that it buried there those it enslaved over some 172 years. We have no documentation of that, although we have several references to the College’s providing coffins.1 Since those record no further expenses such as transport to the grave or digging the grave, I presume there would have been no such expenses--other of our enslaved would undertake such tasks as part of their job..."

“The Blood Remember Don’T It?”: The Ethnocultural Dramatic Structure Of Katori Hall’S The Blood Quilt, Artisia Green

Arts & Sciences Articles

The Yorùbá influenced Ethnocultural Dramatic Structure of Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt is an example of the enduring philosophical permanence of African aesthetics within the tradition of Black Theatre. Within The Blood Quilt is the manifestation of a Yorùbá traditional divination system and body of orature, the Odù Ifá. Hall acknowledges exploring Yorùbá cultural expressions, yet she refutes any dramaturgical intention to locate the play within the Odù Ifá. Thus, the incarnation of verses of Ifá in the text evidences her belief that a playwright’s consciousness and her work are often phenomenologically informed. This analysis argues that recognizing, understanding, and …

Dollar Diplomacy By Force: Nation-Building And Resistance In The Dominican Republic, Written By Ellen D. Tillman, Richard L. Turits

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt from publication: "Ellen Tillman has produced a major monograph on the U.S. military occupation of the Dominican Republic between 1916 and 1924. In it she offers a novel account of the powerful national army that the occupying forces created there. Prior to the U.S. invasion, a centralized Dominican military existed only nominally. In the eyes of many U.S. policy makers, this created vulnerabilities for U.S. capital and strategic interests. Drawing heavily on Dominican as well as U.S. archival sources, Tillman demonstrates that remedying this with an effective national army shaped by, and loyal to, the U.S. government was the …

Writing At The Williamsburg Bray School?, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"I’ve become interested recently in whether writing was taught to the pupils in the Williamsburg Bray School. I had assumed all along that it was, and that the discovery of 40 some slate pencils at the Bray School Dig was confirmation of that.

I’d not been alone in my assumption about the teaching of writing, for the great majority of those interested in the Bray School have affirmed that the curriculum included writing..."

Regina Taylor's Crowns: The Overflow Of "Memories Cupped Under The Brim", Artisia Green

Arts & Sciences Articles

In crossing the cultural border between the North and the South, Yolanda, the main character in Regina Taylor’s Crowns, is sent on both a physical and metaphysical journey that symbolizes the ideology of the Kongo Cosmogram. South Carolina, Yolanda’s landing point and the play’s geographical context, bears multiple implications for the dramaturgy of Crowns. The land is saturated with memories of the African presence due to slave importation patterns within the coastal Sea Islands and low-country post–Civil War settlement by formerly enslaved people of West Africa and the Caribbean. As such Yorùbá aesthetics and theoretical ideas of the self …

Epistemology For A Humanistic Human Biology: The Case Of The New York African Burial Ground Project At Howard University, Michael L. Blakey

Arts & Sciences Articles

"A basic respect for the meaning of culture (that human perceptions, ideas, and behaviors learned) demands us to accept that the human practice of science is thoroughly embedded in culture..."