American Studies Commons^™

Resurrection: Representations Of The Black Church In Contemporary Popular Culture, Rachel J. Daniel

Doctoral Dissertations

From 1997 to 2013, there have been multiple representations of the black church in popular culture. African American artists have always explored spirituality within black communities; in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, however, the increasing fame of Tyler Perry, T.D. Jakes, Steve Harvey, and other prominent African American Christians has placed black church culture on the center stage of American mainstream media. This dissertation examines contemporary black Christian popular fiction, stage performances, black church films, and rap music. These representations demonstrate that black church culture is distinct from secular black popular culture and white evangelical Christian …

The Dark Skin I Am In, Zakiya A. Brown

SURGE

“You know, you’re pretty for a dark skinned girl, but I’m sure people tell that all the time”

“Can I honestly tell you, that you are the prettiest dark skinned girl I know?”

Throughout my life I have received comments such as these. I’ve heard them from my mother’s colleagues, strangers, and sometimes my friends. They provoked me to think that somehow I genetically lucked out to be physically attractive even though I was cursed to live within dark skin. [excerpt]

Reconstructing The Nation: African American Political Thought And America's Struggle For Racial Justice, Alex Zamalin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how twentieth-century African American intellectuals engaged American political cultural beliefs central to American identity. A prominent argument of American political thinkers has been that the liberal-democratic ideals of freedom, equality, representative government, the rule of law, tolerance and civic obligation are what make Americans a unique people. From the immediate aftermath of the Second World War to the late twentieth-century such an argument provided American politicians, social movements and intellectuals a strong justification for divergent political claims, from Cold War warriors calling for the containment of Soviet Communism, to Civil Rights activists calling for racial integration to …

Revisioning Reality: Normative Resistance In The Cultural Works Of The Lincoln Motion Picture Company, Nella Larsen, And Allan Rohan Crite, 1915-1945, Andrea L. Mays

American Studies ETDs

Despite the fact that nineteenth and twentieth century biologist and Social Darwinists theories of race have been dispelled, the social residue of white supremacist ideologies continue to have social and political implications throughout American society. America's racial hierarchy, and whiteness as a social and racial construct instantiated within it, against which every other group of people has been relationally situated, has helped not only to define non-white racial subjects in inferior terms, it has also guaranteed a perpetuation of race-based structural and social inequalities in United States of America. African American Studies, Critical Race Theory, Whiteness Studies, and most recently …

Dan Subotnik, Toxic Diversity: Race, Gender, And Law Talk In America, Hannah Abrams

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Hospital Always Wins: Review 2, Michelle Boyd

RadioDoc Review

This documentary raises crucial questions about our definitions of mental health and healing as well as the meaning of forgiveness. It also illustrates how an individual’s ability to extract themselves from the grip of institutional power is highly dependent on luck and money and privilege. Perhaps most importantly, this piece gives voice, in a complex, respectful manner, to Ibrahim and other schizophrenics whose struggles remain buried and ignored. One element that is missing from this story is an account of how race complicates this unequal power dynamic. Ibrahim is black… “Hospital’s” impact might have been even wider had …

The Young White Faces Of Slavery, Mary Niall Mitchell

Mary Niall Mitchell

No abstract provided.

The Rhetoric Of The Hip Hop Hustler: Shifting Representations Of American Identity, Marylou Renee Naumoff

Wayne State University Dissertations

The nature of American identity is highly contested in the twenty-first century. This dissertation seeks to understand how this state of uncertainty produces a rhetorical opening for new and unimagined rhetorical possibilities. As citizens lose faith in the narratives that have defined national identity, the populace becomes open to a new narrative and a new figure to represent American identity. I argue that the hip hop mogul, or what I label the Hustler, seizes this rhetorical opportunity to rewrite the narrative of the Self-Made Man, a narrative that has historically been figured as white and masculine. The Self-Made Man is …

Race Representations In Children’S Picture Books And Its Impact On The Development Of Racial Identity And Attitudes, Jenna Wilson

Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award

This paper will look at how (if) race representations in children’s picture books have changed since the twentieth century, and whether children’s racial attitudes have changed throughout the last ninety years. Furthermore, the paper will discuss challenges within multicultural picture books for children, and provide resources for positive racial and ethnic representations within picture books.