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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Reimagining Prince Hall: Race, Freemasonry, And Material Culture In Boston, 1775-1870, Sueanna Smith
Reimagining Prince Hall: Race, Freemasonry, And Material Culture In Boston, 1775-1870, Sueanna Smith
Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation revisits the subject of early black freemasonry and draws upon a new wealth of archival material to recontextualize it through the lens of social history and print and material culture. This study explores the way that freemasonry operated in the daily lives of black masons and presents a new social history of the formation of Boston’s first black masonic lodge. Turning specifically to print and material culture, it traces the way that the earliest black masons engaged in the broader print and material culture of the society, thus promoting interracial engagement. This study also traces how the Prince …
Representation Matters: African American Female Readers’ Perceptions Of Young Adult Literature, Asia Harden
Representation Matters: African American Female Readers’ Perceptions Of Young Adult Literature, Asia Harden
Honors Theses
In 2019, only 6% of U.S. children’s books published were written by black authors. This portion of the publishing industry, and particularly the category of young adult literature (YA) has room for improvement when it comes to African American representation. To identify how this lack of representation affects readers, this study was broken into two parts which resulted in obtaining the African American female YA author perspective, as well as African American female readers. J. Elle and Kristina Forest were interviewed in the first portion of the study, and three focus groups were conducted in the second study with 13 …
From Camp Meetings To Crusades: African American Religious Songs In Context, Konner B. Smith
From Camp Meetings To Crusades: African American Religious Songs In Context, Konner B. Smith
Honors College Theses
The images found throughout African American religious songs are timeless, yet they reflect the realities of their particular historical and cultural contexts, explaining those circumstances from the view of the African American community. Despite the differences in sound, there is a strong sense of continuity between each era, as compositions from slave songs to rap use certain passages from scripture to emphasize the themes of freedom, hope, and perseverance. From the spiritual to the gospel to contemporary religious rap, both history and hope have been lifted up and transformed in the voices of oppressed and enduring African Americans.
Adding A Dimension: Illustrating Triple Consciousness Theory In The African American Literary Tradition, Asia Wesley
Adding A Dimension: Illustrating Triple Consciousness Theory In The African American Literary Tradition, Asia Wesley
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines the way gender expands and nuances W.E.B. DuBois’s double consciousness theory, which depicts the African American identity as a doubleness that is both American and Negro. Black feminist criticism’s nuanced formulation of DuBois’s formulation of Black identity allows the African American literary tradition to be seen through three lenses: an American, a Negro, and an African American’s gender identity. In order to further contemporize the pre-existing Black feminist criticism, I examine Hurston, Brooks, and Morrison in the three time periods that followed DuBois’s coining of double consciousness theory: (1) the Harlem Renaissance, (2) the Civil Rights Movement …
Race Youth In Twentieth-Century American Literature And Culture, Claire E. Lenviel
Race Youth In Twentieth-Century American Literature And Culture, Claire E. Lenviel
Theses and Dissertations--English
Race Youth in Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture argues for the centrality of black youth, both real and literary, to the trajectories of African American literature and its repudiation of white supremacy. Drawing on research into the rise of the adolescent and teenager as distinct social categories, I argue that age-based subjectivity should inform how we read race-based subjectivity. My first chapter explores how early twentieth-century black periodicals push back against white supremacist theories of human development in an explicit appeal to what I call “race youth,” the children and adolescents who would take up the mantle of racial uplift. …