African History Commons^™

The Spirit Is Willing, But The Flesh Is Weak: Contemporary Pan-Africanism And The Challenges To A United States Of Africa, Adesola Adeyemo

Master's Theses

Establishing a ‘United States of Africa’ to the average individual is deemed as a mythical idea in contemporary Africa, irrespective of the popularity of this idea several years ago. Today, the idea is idealized as overambitious – considering the balkanized state of the continent post-colonialization. Because of this, attempts made since then have favored enforcing regional integration over continental integration. Undeniably, this idea would not have come into being if it wasn’t for the concept of Pan-Africanism - which has for long guided the political and socio-economic policies created on the continent. The goal of this research is …

A Tangled Web: Quakers And The Atlantic Slave System 1625 – 1770., Kate Freedman

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation re-contextualizes the Quakers’ history as anti-slavery pioneers by exploring the crucial economic role that the slave-based economies of the British West Indies played in establishing the Quakers as a powerful sect in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Atlantic world. Quakers were driven by their faith to foster a spirit of equality inside and outside of their meetings. They were among the first European religious sects to allow women to preach, to oppose violence and war, and, beginning in the middle of the eighteenth-century, to ban the practice of enslaving other human beings within their membership. Yet the Quakers …

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 …

The Politics Of Wounds, Jonathan Nash

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What configuration of strategies and discourses enable the white male and settler body politic to render itself as simultaneously wounded and invulnerable? I contextualize this question by reading the discursive continuities between Euro-America’s War on Terror post-9/11 and Algeria’s War for Independence. By interrogating political-philosophical responses to September 11, 2001 beside American rhetoric of a wounded nation, I argue that white nationalism, as a mode of settler colonialism, appropriates the discourses of political wounding to imagine and legitimize a narrative of white hurt and white victimhood; in effect, reproducing and hardening the borders of the nation-state. Additionally, by turning to …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

The Devil In Cartagena: Slavery, Religion And Resistance In Seventeenth-Century Caribbean Colombia, Daniel James Dawson

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis examines the role of religion in African communities in seventeenth-century Caribbean Colombia, and the tensions between the system of racial and religious hierarchy imposed by the Catholic Church and Spanish authorities and the everyday religious life of free and enslaved Africans and their descendants. It will examine interactions between African religion and Christianity and African resistance to Spanish Catholic authority. It will examine Spanish-Catholic thought on African spirituality, and investigate the relationship between African subjects and Catholic authorities in the Spanish Atlantic. It explores the goals of Catholic authorities in relation to African subjects, and the various methods …

Race And Community : Coloured Identity Formation Within Nineteenth And Twentieth Century Cape Town, South Africa., Cornelius L. Sanford

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Historically, the "Coloured" identity within Cape Town, South Africa was used as an umbrella term to include all the cultures residing within the city that were not either European, or of South Africa's native Bantu speaking groups. However, the identity seemingly has now shifted to primarily refer to multi-racial people. However, if the Coloured identity was initially created as a catch- all phrase, then what shifted the term to now address those who are of multi- racial descent? This essay examines the progression of the Coloured identity within Cape Town society by tracking the rise and fall of Cape Town's …

Self-Executed Dramaturgy : A Journey With Miss Ida B. Wells., Sidney Michelle Edwards

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents my experience with the production of Miss Ida B. Wells by Endesha Ida Mae Holland. I used self-executed dramaturgy to enrich my process as an actor and create multiple vocally and physically dynamic historical characters. Throughout this document, I explore how my personal acting process and development as an artist are heavily influenced by the practices of the Alexander Technique. I discuss the unique challenges that I faced with scoliosis and vocal trauma and how I used the training I received during my graduate career to address those challenges. My personal account details the specific methods by …

A Colony’S State Of Sovereignty: Decolonization Has Yet To Take Place In Rwanda, Mahalia Mehu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Martin Shipway, renowned author of Decolonization and Its Impact and professor of twentieth-century French Studies stated that:

"[...]it took only about twenty years for most of the formal structures and institutions of colonialism [...]to be swept away.[The] often violent and intermittently intense period of crisis[...] [explains] an international phenomenon as complex as decolonization[...] ."

Yet this quote by Shipway does not speak to the fact that independence from former colonial powers has not been fully achieved and neither has decolonization. According to the documentation of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, the former German/Belgian colony of Rwanda did not achieve the …

Ubi Bene, Ibi Patria - The Identities, Displacements, And Homelands Of The Juifs D’Algérie, Britt Shacham

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Multidisciplinary Studies of Bard College.

French Colonialism In Algeria: War, Legacy, And Memory, Haley Brown

Honors Theses

Over the course of my research for my honors thesis project, I sought to better understand the history of French colonialism in Algeria in addition to how it is remembered today. I theorized that the legacy of this history impacts issues of immigration exclusion, islamophobia, racism, and social discrimination faced by Algerians in modern day France. These issues have become important topics of discussion and investigation in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks carried out by descendants of North African immigrants in the heart of hexagonal France. Through the study of primary and secondary sources, as well as a …

Colonial Control And Power Through The Law: Territoriality, Sovereignty, And Violence In German South-West Africa, Caleb Joseph Cumberland

Senior Projects Spring 2018

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

Performative Circulations Of St. Martín De Porres In The African Diaspora, James Patrick Padilioni, Jr.

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

"Performative Circulations of St. Martín de Porres in the African Diaspora" examines the significance of the first American Catholic saint of African descent, the Peruvian friar Martín de Porres (1579-1639), through several case studies that track iconographic circulations and ritual-performative restagings of Martín across the African Diaspora between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. I approach Martín de Porres as both an historical figure and a figure of repetition and re-figuration in Black Diasporic cultures. Martín's material life and the diffusion of his cult of devotion following his death form a prism for interrogating the (re)formations of Diasporic Catholicism, when the …

The Principles And Rhetoric Of Autarky: Debate And Decision-Making In Early Colonial Kenya, Ian Michael Ferguson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This study seeks to understand the decision-making process of the colonial government of the East Africa Protectorate by articulating the principles of autarky: financial independence, development, and effective occupation. The principles of autarky, which are both goal and process for the colonial government, strove to bring that government to a state of self-sufficiency, or autarky. These principles created their own rhetoric within official correspondence which dominated the decision-making process. By looking at three different periods, Foreign Office control, the transition to Colonial Office responsibility, and the Soldier Settlement Scheme of 1919, the importance of the principles and rhetoric of autarky …

Evaluating Appropriate Repertoire For Developing Singers: An African-American Art Song Anthology, Nicole Michelle Sonbert

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Finding appropriate and unique repertoire for the developing singer is a daunting task and ongoing challenge in the teaching profession. There are limited resources to help guide teachers in selecting varied, yet suitable repertoire that falls outside of the standard Western European musical canon. The early years, ages 17–21, are crucial to establishing a healthy and well-rounded vocal approach to singing, while also introducing the student to a wide variety of music. African-American art song is a great option for developing singers. Repertoire should allow a student to grow musically, vocally, and artistically according to the singer’s specific stage of …