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Full-Text Articles in Cultural History
Death, Dreaming, And Diaspora: Achieving Orientation Through Afro-Spirituality, Liz Johnston, Jaime Elizabeth Johnston
Death, Dreaming, And Diaspora: Achieving Orientation Through Afro-Spirituality, Liz Johnston, Jaime Elizabeth Johnston
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Enslavement, colonization, and the systems that uphold racial injustice were and still are a series of new, unfathomable, and challenging experiences that prompt individuals within the diaspora to seek orientation. How does a human cope with centuries of attempts at the systematic destruction of their humanity, culture, and identity? How can they reclaim that identity, especially when so much of it seems lost? I address these questions by utilizing texts from the expansive body of work regarding ethnographic-historical-religious studies on Afro-spiritual practices to better analyze instances in literature in the ongoing practice of diasporic orientation. In this project, I argue …
The Arena Players, Inc.: The Oldest Continuously Operating African American Community Theatre In The United States, Alexis Michelle Skinner
The Arena Players, Inc.: The Oldest Continuously Operating African American Community Theatre In The United States, Alexis Michelle Skinner
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Hay (1994) gave the Arena Players the moniker, “the oldest continuously operating African American community theatre company” in the U.S. But, if Black Theatre is increasingly found in mainstream venues in regional theatre and Broadway while Black Drama is relegated to syllabi, where is the living practice of African American, or black, community theatre? And what guarantees its survival? Craig (1980) and Fraden (1994) give voice to black critics, like Locke (1925), in co-creating objectives for black theatre during the FTP which took stage as the Negro Little Theatre continued. Hill & Hatch (2003) solidify the geographical and ideological connections …
Will To Remember: Counter-Archives In The Work Of Alvarez, Danticat, And Díaz, Megan Elizabeth Feifer
Will To Remember: Counter-Archives In The Work Of Alvarez, Danticat, And Díaz, Megan Elizabeth Feifer
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation argues the essays, fiction, non-fiction, and non-profit work of authors Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and Junot Díaz produce counter-narratives that when assembled, create a counter-archive of the Rafael Leonidas Trujillo dictatorship and its lasting effects. To support this claim, I analyze the various genres and medias they employ throughout the late 20thand early 21st centuries as redressing not only the “official” state history of the dictatorship, but also the overarching construction of history with a capital “H”. Through a close reading of form and the thematic concerns present in their work, I demonstrate how they …