Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Aids Normalization, Alexandra Juhasz, Theodore Kerr

Publications and Research

Review of On Our Backs: The Revolutionary Art of Queer Sex Work, curated by Alexis Heller for New York’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, which was on view from September 2019 to January 2020, and other contemporary AIDS culture.

Marietta J. Tanner, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Today, Marietta hopes that the sisters in Eta Omega Omega do not forget about their commitment for service in addition to the sisterhood and community building that comes with being part of a sorority. She encourages them to “go where the people are, ” to register them to vote or to get children in the Headstart programs. At the very least, she encourages going directly to teenagers to teach them the camaraderie and drive for change that comes about as being part of a Black sorority.

LINK TO VIDEO INTERVIEW: http://cdm17265.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/baahp/id/78

Irma Clement, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Ms. Clement’s always has a positive outlook on life journey and noted that “Life is a game that we play to the maximum, with whatever hands we are dealt”.

LINK TO VIDEO INTERVIEW: http://cdm17265.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/baahp/id/72

Film/Tv Response & Critique, Janelle Poe

Open Educational Resources

This extra credit assignment was designed for a joint humanities course in English and Black Studies, combining first-year writing and an introductory survey of African American Literature. Throughout the semester, students are encouraged to complete extra credit assignments, such as this film/tv review, to earn additional points (up to 5%).

Combining rhetorical analysis with applied research, students have a list of films or television shows to choose from, as well as the ability to select their own related media, and write a response that includes a synopsis, analysis of plot, character development and themes, and personal response to the text …

Beauty Is Not Black And White: A Content Analysis Of Black Women’S Body Image In Television Media, Alexis Hubbard

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are few bodies of literature that look at Black women’s body image in television media. When Black women were studied most research (Falconer & Neville, 2000; Jhally & Kilbourne, 2010; Smith, 2014; Shearon-Richardson, 2011;) compared them to White ideals. However, this study did a content analysis of Black women in predominantly Black or ethnically diverse television shows using qualitative studies that suggest a Black ideal. The researcher examined lead character(s) body shapes, comments about their body, hair texture and comments about their hair. This research looked at protective factors (aspects Black life that allow for more body satisfaction) like …

Doing Latinidad While Black: Afro-Latino Identity And Belonging, Vianny Jasmin Nolasco

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study centers on the experiences of Afro-Latinos and how the racialization of Latino as a distinctly ‘brown’ identity—thereby excluding Blackness—shapes their identity and sense of belonging within Latino communities and spaces. Through in-depth interviews with eight Afro-Latinos, and using West and Fenstermaker’s (1995) work, ‘Doing Difference’, I find that the invisibility of Blackness, being categorized as Black, and therefore not Latino, and the negative meanings attached to Blackness may make it difficult for Afro-Latinos to come into their racial and ethnic identity and feel like they belong in Latino spaces. However, these experiences are also an important step to …

The Attracting Intelligent Minds Conference: An Assessment Of Graduate Diversity Recruitment, Alfred T. Dowe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Graduate student recruitment is one of the most important factors in growing university enrollment. Unlike undergraduate recruitment, graduate recruitment is a coordinated effort facilitated between graduate faculty and program coordinators and graduate recruiters who often work outside of the department. An essential element in graduate recruitment is the effectiveness with which underrepresented minorities are identified and recruited. Graduate schools are commonly using initiatives known as intervention strategies to help enhance their traditional recruitment strategies and campus visitation programs have become a popular recruitment tool within those strategies.

Since the 1990’s, the University of Arkansas (UA) has employed various intervention strategies …

The Shallow End Of The Deep South: Civil Rights Activism In Arkansas, 1865-1970, Sarah Riva

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

On April 7, 1968, Governor Winthrop Rockefeller claimed that “Arkansas today stands at the threshold of leading the nation...for a better America,” The Republican Arkansas Governor spoke on the steps of the state capitol at a memorial for the beloved civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. who had been assassinated three days earlier. Rockefeller’s claim that Arkansas could lead the nation came just two years after the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formally ended its work in the state to improve racial equality. Their efforts had seen widespread acceptance of integrated public facilities, increased voter registration and more meaningful …

The Impacts Of Incarceration On The Wellbeing Of Family Members Of African American Males Who Experience The U.S Prison System: A Phenomenological Study, Tremaine N. Leslie

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

African Americans encounter a high rate of imprisonment, and the social, economic, mental and other effects of imprisonment are extended to their families and communities (Roberts, 2004). In addition to separating individuals from their families and communities, incarceration maximizes the probability for fractured relationships, fragmented communities, and encumbers the public service systems (DeHart, Shapiro & Clone, 2018).Therefore, the purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to explore the mental health effects of incarceration on the family members of African American males who experience the U.S prison system.

The theoretical framework utilized for this study was the critical race theory (CRT) immersed …

Colonized Loyalty: Asian American Anti-Blackness And Complicity, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In this essay, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstad argues that solidarity between and within communities of color remains our only chance to fight against the brutal and insidious forces of racism, white supremacy and racial capitalism.

Exposing Racism Part I: Environmental Racism, Megan L. Benka-Coker, Office Of Multicultural Engagement

Office of Multicultural Engagement Events

This is the first in a four-part series on Exposing Racism sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Engagement. Health Sciences Prof. Megan Benka-Coker '09 discusses how environmental racism occurs through rules, regulations, and policies that target Black communities.

African American Women In The Domestic Service Industry During Reconstruction. An Intersectional Analysis, Kathryn Small

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

African American Women in the Domestic Service Industry during Reconstruction. An Intersectional Analysis.

My paper focuses on the experiences of African American women, within the workplace, during Reconstruction. Whilst the Civil War resulted in the emancipation of the African American population, the day-to-day attainment of freedom posed a very different reality, most notably in respect of limited opportunities for economic advancement. All working women of this time were subjected to discrimination. However, black women were especially discriminated against due to their race. Most markedly, this can be seen in the fact that work opportunities available to black women were restricted …

Understand North Omaha's Past To Chart The Best Course For The Future, Preston Love Jr.

Black Studies Faculty Publications

As a native of Omaha with years of accumulated wisdom as to the plight of my beloved race, I have a responsibility to speak up during these tumultuous times. I do not have the right, however, to speak for my community. I am observing a tremendous surge of activism and conversation among black Omahans, from our elected officials and organizational leaders to our lay leaders and, most importantly, our young leaders.

Ua94/6/1 My Story: Wku Women's Basketball's Sherry Porter, Sherry Porter

Student/Alumni Personal Papers

My Story is a series of first-person feature articles written by WKU student-athletes. The student-athletes will be telling their own stories in their own words. This article written by women’s basketball senior Sherry Porter. Porter reflects on the state of current events going on nationwide.

African American Genealogy Workshop Poster, Kelli Johnson

Ephemera

African American Genealogy Workshop Poster

The Pandemic Of Racism Has Endured And Grown. It's Time To Listen., Preston Love Jr.

Black Studies Faculty Publications

Noted African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois more than a century ago wrote of the “peculiar indifference” to the magnitude of human suffering brought about by racial disparities in health outcomes.

Freed Faces, Our Past Americans: Collaborations To Create, Digitize And Describe The “Former Slaves In Freedom” Collection, Gayle Porter

Collaborative Librarianship

The Chicago State University (CSU) Archives collaborated with the International Society of Sons and Daughters of Slave Ancestry (ISDSA), a Chicago-based lineage society, to digitize, describe, and make accessible online a collection of 359 private historic photographs of formerly enslaved African Americans, and 90+ brief family histories, submitted by descendants. This case study describes the benefits, processes, and challenges of this unique, unfinished collaborative project. The study also describes: 1. Creative, flexible approaches to collaborative digital projects by an academic institution and a community organization; 2. Balancing cataloging/metadata standards while respecting a curator’s goals for the collection.

User Guide To The Mds Collection Of African American History In Huntington, West Virginia, Kelli Johnson

User Guides

Various people have worked over the years to collect stories and artifacts about Black history in Huntington, WV. This site seeks to gather that information in one place and make it available for all.

Ua94/6/1 My Story: Wku Track & Field's Adarian Gray, Adarian Gray

Student/Alumni Personal Papers

My Story is a series of first-person feature articles written by WKU student-athletes. The student-athletes will be telling their own stories in their own words. This article written by track & field senior thrower Adarian Gray, who has represented both WKU softball and track & field during her career on the Hill.

Ua3/10/2 We Are One Wku, Wku President's Office - Caboni

WKU Administration Documents

Email from WKU president Timothy Caboni to WKU Alumni and friends. An identical email was sent to the WKU Community.

Corporeal Archives Of Hiv/Aids: The Performance Of Relation, Jaime Shearn Coan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Corporeal Archives of HIV/AIDS: The Performance of Relation, explores how choreographers and theater artists in the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City used time and space to involve their audiences experientially in the project of grieving and rebuilding in the midst of the temporal chaos of mass death and illness (crisis time). Refusing to portray HIV/AIDS as a discrete or singular phenomenon, these artists revealed how it intersected with every aspect of life, including artistic practice, thereby delinking their bodies from a singular association with pathology and death. Undertaking extensive archival research on the work …

Una Isla, Dos Literaturas: Contrapunteo De La Literatura De La Isla Y La Diáspora Dominicanas (1965–2018), Jose L. Peralta

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Una isla, dos literaturas.

Contrapunteo de la literatura de la isla y la diáspora dominicanas (1965-2018)

by

Jose Luis Peralta Genao

Advisor: Carlos Riobó

The literary works written by Dominican Diaspora as well as the ones written in the island have been dealing with a very complicated phenomena grown as the result of Dominican massive emigration of twenty century, namely the definition of dominicaness (dominicanidad). In the search of a broader notion of this concept the idea of being Dominican gets build and transforms in different Dominican literary spaces. By searching national discursive elements that construct that Dominican identities in …

Black Skin, White Gaze: The Presence And Function Of The Linchpin Character In Biopics About Black American Protagonists, Nicole N. Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout its existence the American film industry has--through the stories it has chosen to tell as well as discriminatory practices such as whitewashing and the erasure of non-White people--enshrined whiteness as the default American racial identity. In multiracial films, Hollywood productions have historically employed racialized character tropes to further emphasize hegemonic American whiteness. This practice continues to the present day with the introduction of the linchpin, a White character who appears in films with majority non-White casts. Although billed and presented as a supporting character, the linchpin’s centrality to a film’s narrative or emotional arc elevates them to main character …

'Odd Secrets Of The Line': Emily Dickinson And The Uses Of Folk, Wendy Tronrud

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Emily Dickinson and her poetry have famously been used as a defining example of American lyric poetry. The traditional scholarly perspective maintains that the lyric poem and its speaker exist in isolation and at a remove from social and political contexts. Recent scholarship on American poetry of the long nineteenth century, however, has taken a more historical and cultural turn, reconsidering how poetic and vernacular forms and genres circulated both privately and publicly. “Odd Secrets of the Line”: Emily Dickinson and the Uses of Folk joins this conversation by theorizing how Dickinson’s poetry, written during the 1859-1865 period, registers the …

Stealin' The Meetin': Black Education History & The Black Panthers' Oakland Community School, Robert P. Robinson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation frames the Black Panthers' Oakland Community School (OCS) as a convergence of Black self-determination/Black Power, Black education history, and curriculum studies. Drawing from widely-cited archives, rarely-cited archives, oral history, periodicals, and secondary source material, the proposed study extends the OCS narrative by tracing its curricular trajectory and highlighting the voices of students, parents, and staff. It considers how the school’s history provides examples of educational practices—such as restorative justice and culturally relevant pedagogy—that would not become named or popularized in mainstream education until much later, asserting that histories of this sort can inform educational endeavors in the present. …

Am I A Systemic Iniquity Interrupter? Understanding The Influence Of Critical Race Educating Through The Narratives Of Alternative Ed. Black Educators, Ayanna Gore

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

This research aims to illuminate the Critical Influence Black educators from an alternative education certifying program (which will be labeled with the fictional name Lead On throughout this research) through their personal narratives on the successes, struggles, and benefits of teaching Black students. Using CRT methodology (tenant 1 & 2: counter-storytelling and the permanence of racism) to hear and analyze the narratives of Black educators experience around working to have a Critical Influence on their students. Taking an Emic approach, three in-depth story-telling sessions were conducted for each participant. All participants are alum of the alternative certifying education program and …

Black Girls Matter: The Impact Of Historical Representation On Contemporary Education, Carolyn Strong

Dissertations

A long history of misogynoir and negative stereotypes about Black
girls and women can be found throughout the literature and popular
culture of the United States. These stereotypes inform the lived
experience of Black girls and women, and in particular interfere with
African American girls’ ability to thrive in a school environment. An
autoethnographic research approach shows that various strategies, in
particular, Black girl-centric spaces, have proven to be helpful in
supporting Black girls who have to negotiate varying degrees of
hostility in general environments. These could be applied more broadly
to improve Black girls’ mental, psychological, physical, and
educational …

“I’M Real I Thought I Told Ya”: Developing Critical Media Literacy Through U.S. Latinx Digital Media Representations, Solange T. Castellar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how audiences engage with U.S. Latinx media representations through the practice of critical media literacy. I interrogate how media consumers construct critical media literacy through interacting with U.S. Latinx figures on digital media platforms, particularly on the social-media app, Twitter, and the user-generated video content platform, YouTube. Throughout this thesis, I argue that users on these platforms who engage with U.S. Latinx pop culture figures, like Jennifer Lopez and Belcalis Almanzar (Cardi B), read, digest, and comprehend a variety of multimedia images, texts, or videos, and that this engagement becomes an accessible form of critical media literacy, …

The International Rise Of Afro-Brazilian Modernism In The Age Of African Decolonization And Black Power, Abigail Lapin Dardashti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Two competing artistic representations of Brazilian blackness emerged from 1966 to 1988. The first began in 1966 when the Brazilian government positioned itself as a leading diplomatic partner for newly independent African nations by showcasing black Brazilian art in West Africa. Through exhibitions, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry aimed to highlight the country’s presumed homogeneous identity and absence of racism. The second definition arose through the work of artists inspired by U.S. social rights activism, who founded Brazil’s civil rights movement in 1975. Brazilian artist-activists combined symbolism from U.S. Black Power, African liberation movements, and Afro-Brazilian culture to denounce racism in …

Afro-Americano: The Transracialization Of The African-American Spanish Speaker, John M. Flanagan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Transracialization is not a biological term connoting the change of one’s skin tone to become a member of a different race. Its definition has its roots in racialization—the ideological process that describes how one assembles ideas about groups based on their race and decides, for example, what a ‘Black’ person is and how ‘Black’ people speak. Thus, transracialization is a linguistic term that describes the political and sociocultural act of recontextualizing one’s phenotype with the use of language, and in so doing, upending the observers’ stereotypical expectations of who one is (Alim 2016). This dissertation deals with how Spanish influences …