African History Commons^™

The Silent Grave: A Geophysical Investigation Of The Brush Arbor Cemetery In Starkville, Mississippi, Kathryn Cassidy Jean Rayburn

Theses and Dissertations

The Brush Arbor Cemetery is an early-to-late 19th century Black cemetery that was also the meeting place of one of the first Black church congregations in Starkville, Mississippi. The cemetery has suffered greatly from structural violence and degradation. Utilizing Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), this research has revealed important information about the Brush Arbor Cemetery. The results of the GPR survey suggest there are 54 potential unmarked burials in addition to 35 marked burials. The Viewshed analysis suggests that the likely meeting place of the church congregation is in complete view of the white Odd Fellows Cemetery directly across the street. …

We Are Gullah: A Community Approach To Preserving Gullah Geechee Historical Sites Of Significance, Peter Gaytan

All Theses

The National Register of Historic Places is an inventory established by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 that identifies architectural and archaeological sites significant to American history. The National Register was created to encourage the documentation, evaluation, and protection of America’s historic resources. Over 96,000 historic properties, sites, and structures are currently listed on the National Register. Despite the number of historic places listed on the National Register there is still an overwhelmingly low number of sites listed on the National Register relating to underrepresented communities. This thesis assessed the definition of significance laid out in the National Register …

An Ethnography Of Voodoo Tourism And Heritage Sites In New Orleans, Lousiana, Bryant Long

Master of Arts in Art and Design Theses

This thesis considers how Voodoo is presented and experienced in various tourism and heritage sites within New Orleans in the present moment. A variety of visual representations, verbal narratives and multimedia performances were documented and analyzed through participant observation. Current tourism relies on the city’s ghost stories, mythology, as well as Voodoo practices and lore, raising questions about the melding of fact and fiction in the potential perpetuation of sensational ideas about the city and its African heritage. Cultural sites discussed in this thesis include Congo Square, the New Orleans Voodoo Museum, Voodoo Authentica, the New Orleans Museum of Art, …

“A Certain Brauch:” German-Georgian Palatine And Rhenish Immigrant Houses In Columbia County, New York And Their Vernacular Architectural Roots, Andrew J. Roberge

Senior Projects Spring 2022

In this archaeological and architectural survey of 18th Century Palatine and Rhenish immigrant houses in New York's Hudson Valley, specifically in Columbia County, I track the development of three houses from their earliest vernacular forms to those touched by the Georgian influence. The Georgian worldview, stemming from European Enlightenment ideals, began permeating colonial American society in the 18th Century. It's influence first began to touch the wealthy and elite most connected with mother Europe, and then trickled into more common society. I chronicle and analyze Germantown, NY's Reformed Sanctity Church Parsonage, Germantown, NY's Simeon Rockefeller House, and Clermont, NY's "Stone …

Colonial Markets, Consumers, And Trade: A Comparative Analysis Of Historic Ceramics From The Bluefields Bay Area, Westmoreland, Jamaica, Lacy Risner

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The ceramic assemblages from a British colonial settlement in Bluefields Bay, Jamaica, provide a unique window into the market availability, exchange routes, and consumption patterns of the eighteenth century. This study compares the historic ceramics collected from two sites in Bluefields Bay to one another and to other intra-island (Jamaica), intraregional (Lesser Antilles), and international (North America) colonial and postcolonial sites to reveal patterns of individual and global ceramic consumption and distribution in the emergent capitalist networks and markets of the colonial era. Integrating small British colonial sites into the networks of other more extensive studies focusing primarily on plantations …

“Nappy Hair, Don’T Care”: Storytelling Through Strands, Sasha D. Onyango

Senior Projects Spring 2022

There is a Kiswahili phrase that goes “intelligence/the mind is like hair, everyone has their own’. Following that logic, how Kenyan women relate to their hair is unique to the individual yet there remains collective and shared experiences. The questions that I raise throughout the paper explore: 1) how images and narratives of hair throughout Kenyan history have influenced the way women today understand how they interact with their hair, 2) the ways Kenyan women are taught about hair grooming and the journey of learning to care for their hair, and 3) Kenyan women’s understanding of their hair and how …

Shifting Sands., Rachid Tagoulla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Shifting Sands is a re-exploration of the presentation of North Africans in colonial postcards, an examination of identity, and a critique of the modern Western museum. Since the inception of photography, colonizers used this medium- especially in the form of postcards- to categorize and exoticize Eastern peoples in order to more easily subjugate them. Shifting Sands is a series of reconstructed colonial postcards which challenges colonial-era stereotypes of North African peoples. The colonial gaze, represented by the camera lens, is subverted through a lensless image-making process in which sand is used to remove the subject from the colonial gaze and …

Kofifi/Covfefe: How The Costumes Of "Sophiatown" Bring 1950s South Africa To Western Massachusetts In 2020, Emma Hollows

Masters Theses

This thesis paper reflects upon the costume design process taken by Emma Hollows to produce a realist production of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company’s musical Sophiatown at the Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts in May 2020. Sophiatown follows a household forcibly removed from their homes by the Native Resettlement Act of 1954 amid apartheid in South Africa. The paper discusses her attempts as a costume designer to strike a balance between replicating history and making artistic changes for theatre, while always striving to create believable characters.

Queen Nanny, A Case Study For Cultural Heritage Tourism: The Archaeology Of Memory And Identity, Lacy Risner

Liberal Arts Capstones

This research project is intended to provide a foundation of knowledge of the Maroon culture in Jamaica, through the legends of one of their most prominent founders, Queen Nanny, as an aid for those who want to educate themselves before approaching community leaders about tourism development. Documentation of Queen Nanny’s life is contested and shrouded in mystery. Yet, that is part of what makes her memory so powerful. The various roles that Queen Nanny is associated with feature her adamant pursuit of an independent life for herself and her Maroons. Whether she is catching bullets or teaching the Maroons how …

La Modernité Tunisienne Dévoilée : Une Étude Autour De La Femme Célibataire, Madison Wagner

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explains recent accounts of discrimination and cutbacks in reproductive health spaces in Tunisia. Complicating dominant analyses, which attribute these events to the post-revolution political atmosphere which has allowed the proliferation of islamic extremism, I interpret these instances as a manifestation of a deeply rooted stigma against sexually active single women. I trace this stigma’s inception to the contradictory way that Habib Bourguiba conceptualized modernity after independence, and the responsibility he assigned to Tunisian women to embody that modernity. This responsibility remains salient today, and is putting Tunisian women in an increasingly untenable and vulnerable position.

After independence, Bourguiba …

Disorderly Histories: An Anthropology Of Decolonization In Western Sahara, Mark Drury

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation situates the disputed geopolitical territory of Western Sahara in a broader, regional history of decolonization. Eschewing the conceptual framework of methodological nationalism, and pushing beyond the period of Moroccan-Sahrawi political conflict, it examines how decolonization has generated multiple, unresolved political projects in this region of the Sahara, dating back to the 1950s. These formations, encompassing southern Morocco, Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, and northern Mauritania, include a zone of militarized occupation, a movement for nation-state sovereignty based in refugee camps, and the borderlands in between. By considering the overlapping processes that emerge through these unresolved …

Sanctioned Silencing, Symbolic Resistance: Race, Space, And Dispossession In A Marginalized South African Community, Killian Richard Miller

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

My field work and the written portion of my ethnography work through issues of marginality, state apparatuses, illusions of freedom, and making meaning in a context of oppression. All these power dynamics are historically-situated within the cultural context and community of Hangberg, a place forged by the race-based forced removals of Apartheid. British and Dutch colonization, Apartheid's racial regime, and the post-Apartheid oligarchical state, are all historical and contemporary authoritative forces that are impacting the everyday lives of people in Hangberg. Perspectives of power also serve as examples …

Nineteenth Century Enslaved African Americans' Coping Strategies For The Stresses Of Enslavement In Virginia, Allison Michelle Campo

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Afro-Barbadian Foodways: Analysis Of The Use Of Ceramics By Freed Afro-Barbadian Estate Workers, Camille Lois Chambers

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Technique Of The Poquoson-Style Log Canoe, David Andrews Moran

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Ontological Blackness: A N Investigation Of 18th Century Burial Practices Among Captive Africans On The Island Of Barbados, Brittany Leigh Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Derogatory To The Rights Of Free-Born Subjects: Racialization And The Identity Of The Williamsburg Area's Free Black Population From 1723-1830, Rebecca Anne Schumann

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Community Building After Emancipation: An Anthropological Study Of Charles' Corner, Virginia, 1862-1922, Shannon Sheila Mahoney

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The half-century marked by the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I was a critical period of cultural, social, and economic transition for African Americans in the southern United States. During the late nineteenth century, while African Americans were rebuilding communities and networks disrupted by enslavement and the ensuing Civil War, several settlements developed between Williamsburg and Yorktown on Virginia's lower peninsula. One of the settlements, Charles' Corner, is an optimal case study for understanding the gradual process of community building during a particularly challenging period of African American history dominated by systemic racism and …

Exploring Moroccan Identities: The Tension Between Traditional And Modern Cuisine In An Urban Context, Miriam R. Dike

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Trauma At Akhetaten (Tell El-Amarna): Interpersonal Violence Or Occupational Hazard, Rebecca Marie Hodgin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The New Kingdom individuals excavated from the site of Akhetaten, modern day Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt, exhibit traumatic injuries relating to construction of the new city. This site is important for Egyptological and bioarchaeological interpretations because the city was only occupied for approximately 15 years. The cemetery provides an archaeological instant in history providing information on the individuals who lived, worked, and died at Akhetaten. A total of 233 individuals have been excavated and analyzed to date. The incidence of forearm fractures as chronic ulnae stress fractures instead of parry fractures are indicated by the presence of Schmorl's nodes, …

The Hegemony Of English In South African Education, Kelsey E. Figone

Scripps Senior Theses

The South African Constitution recognizes 11 official languages and protects an individual’s right to use their mother-tongue freely. Despite this recognition, the majority of South African schools use English as the language of learning and teaching (LOLT). Learning in English is a struggle for many students who speak indigenous African languages, rather than English, as a mother-tongue, and the educational system is failing its students. This perpetuates inequality between different South African communities in a way that has roots in the divisions of South Africa’s past. An examination of the power of language and South Africa’s experience with colonialism and …

I'M Really Just An American: The Archaeological Importance Of The Black Towns In The American West And Late-Nineteenth Century Constructions Of Blackness, Shea Aisha Winsett

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Gaming Among Enslaved Africans In The Americas, And Its Uses In Navigating Social Interactions, Katrina Ann Christiano

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Afro-Barbadian Healthcare During The Emancipation Era, Kathleen Elizabeth Mocklin

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

America's Other Peculiar Institution: Exploring The York County Free Black Register As A Means Of Social Control, 1798-1831, Andrew Jefferson Butts

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The New Orleans Free People Of Color And The Process Of Americanization, 1803-1896, Camille Kempf Gourdet

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Anguilla And The Art Of Resistance, Jane Dillon Mckinney

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This study begins with two premises. The first is that American Studies needs to move beyond the borders of the United States to examine the ideological, cultural and economic effects our country has had on others. The United States has historically been deeply involved in Anguilla's economy, revolution and ideology. The second is that history is a commodity that is selectively deployed in the creation of personal and national cultural values in Anguilla. I use Sherry Ortner's concept of serious games and James Scott's theory of the arts of resistance to analyze how Anguilla's contemporary culture is a product of …

Social Stratification In York County, Virginia, 1860-1919: A Study Of Whites And African-Americans On The Lands Of The Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, Kenneth Edward Stuck

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

African-American Influence On The Chesapeake Bay Log Canoe: Evidence From Nineteenth Century Probate Inventories And Population Census Records Of York County, Virginia And Worcester County, Maryland, Albert James M. Mamary

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

African-American Family And Society On The Lands Of The Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, 1862-1880, Bradley Michael Mcdonald

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.