Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Complete Issue

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

The complete issue 1 of volume 8, Landscapes Journal.

“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales

Theses and Dissertations

After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.

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 …

“Unwanted In My Own Country”: Testimonies Of Identity And Belonging-Negotiations In A Post-Trump America, Nadia Naghedi Baradaran Hajjar

Master's Theses

This research investigates the impact of Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 presidential elections and the so-called, “Muslim” Travel Ban presidential executive orders, on communities of first and second-generation Middle Eastern, Muslim immigrant women in the Los Angeles area, and it is framed within the context of post 9/11-biases and racial discrimination. The ethnographic-like methodology for this research has been conducted with the use of 11 semi-structured in-depth interviews from 2017 that have been transcribed and coded. Findings from the interview data shows that there is a varied amount of responses from the 2016 Presidential Elections and travel ban, however, …

"Swallowing A World": Globalization And The Maximalist Novel, Benjamin S. Bergholtz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the maximalist novel is an aesthetic response to globalization and a global phenomenon in its own right. To support this claim, I analyze the ways in which four maximalist novels—William Gaddis’s J R (1975), David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), and Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know (2014)—both map and formally mimic different elements of globalization. Each of these novels, I argue, is organized around a significant feature or, to put it simply, “effect” of globalization. This organization is so extensive that not only the vast majority …

Is It Still Impossible To Be Black And American?, Darrian Carroll

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis engages Bill Clinton’s presidential rhetoric to investigate how liberal rhetorical practices can be used to extend and sustain the oppression of Black Americans. By adopting Du Bois’ concepts of the color-line and double-consciousness this thesis examines how Bill Clinton was able to recreate the color-line in the Mason Temple speech and benefit from and recreate a world devoid of consciousness in other selected speeches from his corpus. This project takes up three separate speeches by Bill Clinton as texts. The second chapter focuses on Bill Clinton’s “Remarks to the Rainbow Coalition” and “Remarks announcing the initiative” to make …

Theories Of Anzaldua And Fanon: The Battle Of Algiers To Black Lives Matter, Maren Carey

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Cultural theorists have analyzed and exposed many elements of culture that were otherwise out of plain sight. Two theorists, Gloria E. Anzaldua and Franz Fanon, that have done exceptional work attempting to shatter the norms of how concepts such as decolonization, violence and activism could truly work to create progress. Fanon discusses concepts of black existentialism in the early 20th century. He explores how difficult it is, primarily for people of color, to express and develop an identity within the structures of inequality embedded globally through colonization. Anzaldua, on the other hand, does similar work but through micro-cultural changes that …

Speaking Within Subalternity: A Critical Analysis Of Performance Artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena And The Use Of Strategic Essentialism, Paola Martell

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project investigates the work of performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pefia through a postcolonial discourse. This project will be looking at three of the artist's pieces and proposes that though seen as an abstract or avant-garde performer, Gomez-Pefia's these pieces provide a platform for the oppressed who cannot speak for themselves due to hegemony - the subaltern. In the context of Gomez-Pefia's performance art, this theory provides a postcolonial discourse on notions such as hybridity, borders, transculturalism, and other elements of identities found in lafrontera. Ultimately, this project finds that though the subaltern cannot speak, it is through Gomez-Pefia's use of …

Enduring Music: Migrant Appalachian Communities And The Shenandoah National Park, Madeline Marsh

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper is an archival study of the displaced children of families formerly living in the Shenandoah National Park which spans from Strasburg to Waynesboro, Virginia. The study looks at interviews, from the JMU Special Collections archives, of these children in the 1970-80s, nearly fifty years after their forced migration from the 197,438 acres that comprised the park. Change and pressure during the 1930s-40s combined with national policy began the nostalgic preservation and veneration of the culture of these people of the Blue Ridge Mountains; through the archives, a clear and diverse picture of the perspectives and lifestyles of people …

A Martin Luther King Jr. Amendment To The U.S. Constitution: Toward The Abolition Of Poverty, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. prescribed that we add an economic bill of rights to the U.S. Constitution. A King-Inspired bill of rights should include a constitutional amendment that enumerates a natural human right to be free from economic poverty, and appropriate enforcement legislation.

For the sake of abolishing slavery, the Thirteenth Amendment says:

(Section 1) Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

(Section 2) Congress shall have power to enforce this article by …

Racial Peeves: The Exploitation Of Microaggressions, Olivia Gabrielle Ellis

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Racial Peeves: The Exploitation of Microaggressions documents my personal experience of dealing with microaggressions throughout my life, as well as the history of these racial issues. This thesis also documents the creation of my Senior BFA Exhibition of the same title inspired by 1970s Blaxploitation posters.

Variations In Black Media Coverage Of The East St. Louis Race Riot, Angela Rene Womack

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Research for this thesis was undertaken after first researching the East St. Louis Race Riot and seeing that there was an insufficient amount of analysis that had been done on black media coverage in US history overall as well as with the riot specifically. Three significant trends of black media were found my during research. East St. Louis Race Riots black media coverage during and after the events varied at the local, regional, and national levels. My research showed that three media outlets varied. The local media provided information that guided victims and volunteers as to where to go for …

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 …

Black Lives Matter: An Analysis Of Social-Political Activism In Social Media, Ivy Lutz

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Using the contexts of institutionalized racism, ideological dogmatism, and oppression of people of color, this paper will argue the following hypothesis in regards to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and social media activism. People who post on social media about social-political issues have positive relationships with boycotting, protesting, or attending political meetings outside of the online sphere. However, this positive relationship does not correlate to a positive relationship or engagement in regards to their feelings on BLM movement, discrimination of blacks, and police treatment of blacks. If this is the case, then the data for social media postings will …

Swimming In A Sea Of No's: Controlling And Managing The New York Public Pools, Mette L. Jensen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Swimming in a Sea of No's: Managing and Controlling the New York Public Pools traces the genealogy of the regulations, surveillance, and rules employed at New York public pools. The thesis discusses the intent and implications of the spatial strategies created to order and control the environment surrounding the swimming pools, and discusses how municipal public pools as specific, local landscapes manifest broader social and cultural processes. The main focus is on the transformation of the pools during the 1980s and 1990s, two decades after the fiscal crisis in 1975, when the pools had become defunded, dysfunctional spaces. By tracing …

Insurgent Knowledge: The Poetics And Pedagogy Of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, And Adrienne Rich In The Era Of Open Admissions, Danica B. Savonick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Insurgent Knowledge analyzes the reciprocal relations between teaching and literature in the work of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, and Adrienne Rich, all of whom taught in the Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) educational opportunity program at the City University of New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on archival research and analysis of their published work, I show how feminist aesthetics have shaped U.S. education (especially student-centered pedagogical practices) and how classroom encounters with students had a lasting impact on our postwar literary landscape and theories of difference. My project demonstrates how, …

Brother Outsider: Queered Belonging And Kinships In African American Men’S Literature, 1953-1971, Debarati Biswas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Brother Outsider: Queered Belonging and Kinships in African American Men’s Literature, 1953-1971 builds on the work of women-of-color feminists since the late 1960s and queer-of-color critique in the works of José Esteban Muñoz, Robert Reid-Pharr, Roderic Ferguson, and Nadia Ellis, in order to chronicle the emergence of a queer tradition in mid twentieth century African American men’s literature. Through literary analysis and archival research on marginal figures of African American culture during this period, this dissertation proposes that the black pulp novels of Chester Himes, Robert Deane Pharr, Clarence Cooper Jr., and Iceberg Slim perform a queer critique of and …

Black Business As Activism: Ebony Magazine And The Civil Rights Movement, Seon Britton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the fight for justice, equality, and true liberation, African American organizations and institutions have often acted as a voice for the African American community at large focusing on common issues and concerns. With the civil rights movement being broadcast across the world, there was no better time for African American community and civil rights organizations to take a role within the movement in combatting the oppression, racism, and discrimination of white supremacy. Often left out of this history of the civil rights movement is an analysis of black-owned private businesses, also giving shape to the African American community. Black …

Nomads Of The Body, Exiles Of The Mind: Twentieth Century Transnational African American Mexican Art And Literature, Anahi A. Douglas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the migration of African Americans from the U.S. to Mexico; however, these paths extend well beyond the North American continent and intersect with a much larger migration: the African Diaspora. The journeys of Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Willard Motley, and Elizabeth Catlett to Mexico illustrate an intricate web of rhizomatic connections spanning the Black Atlantic, the Caribbean Ocean, the Mississippi River and the Rio Grande. This dissertation examines the history of African American migration to Mexico during the twentieth century a well-documented, yet understudied area of research. These migrations offer an opportunity to reevaluate canon formation, Border …

The Other At War: Performing The Spanish-Cuban-American War On U.S. And Cuban Stages, Juan R. Recondo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Spanish-Cuban-American War, declared by the United States on April 25, 1898, marks a colonial shift in the history of the Caribbean and solidified the expansionist thrust of the United States outside national borders. Theatres in turn-of-the-century New York, which at this point was one of the theatrical centers of the nation, debated for audiences the imperialist character of the U.S. The Cuban struggle and the resulting Spanish-Cuban-American War permeated U.S. drama, thereby portraying a Caribbean in need of salvation by the military intervention of the United States. New York stages of the time became locations where various cultural representations …

The Communal "I": Exclusion And Belonging In American Autobiography, Melissa Coss Aquino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Communal “I” in American autobiography emerges as an aesthetic response to the pressure of using “the master’s tools” to write from a community on the margins to disclose identity in the conflicts of exclusion and belonging. In this case “the master’s tools” to refer to several distinct elements the communal “I” is tasked with navigating: the use of what we have come to identify as standard English, the form and function of European autobiography as a celebration of individual exceptionalism, and the contradictory pressures on these autobiographies to both elevate and protect the communities in question from further marginalization. …

An Intersectional Feminist Perspective Of Emmett Till In Young Adult Literature, Claire Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Emmett Till’s murder inspired many novelists, poets, and artists. Recently, Till has inspired several feminist young adult novelists who are introducing his case in an intersectional way to a new generation of readers. The works that I have studied are A Wreath for Emmett Till (2003) by Marilyn Nelson, The Hunger Games Trilogy (2008-2010) by Suzanne Collins, and Midnight without a Moon (2017) by Linda Jackson. By examining how the authors employ a feminist perspective, readers can understand how they are striving for a more inclusive, intersectional feminist movement. This is significant because the publishing industry, specifically for Young Adult …

Historicizing Muslim American Literature: Studies On Literature By African American And South Asian American Muslim Writers, Wawan Eko Yulianto

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In response to the challenge of understanding Muslim Americans in a way that highlights their integral role in the United States through literature, this research starts with two questions: 1) how should we read Muslim American literature in relation to the lived experiences of Islam in America? and 2) how does Muslim American literature contribute to the more mainstream American literature.

To answer those questions, this research takes as its foundations the theories by Stuart Hall and Satya Mohanty on, firstly, the evolving nature of diaspora identity and on the epistemic status of identity. Following Hall’s argument that every expression …

Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian Nation: The Theology Of White Supremacy In Liberal White American Christianity, Sophia Driscoll Gamber

Religious Studies Honors Papers

Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian Nation explores the relationships between white supremacy, American nation-building, and Protestantism. The argument operates on two levels. It is firstly concerned with unpacking the development of white supremacy as a cultural theology that evolved alongside the American project from European colonization to the present day, one which infiltrates all aspects of the American project and provides its unjust racial hierarchies with divine justification. To this end, the project then turns to an analysis of the development of American nationalism and discusses the ways in which we have cultivated a heroic American mythology that undergirds both white supremacy …

“The Only Way Out Is In”: Negotiating Identity Through Narrative In The House On Mango Street And The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Brianna E. Taylor

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

While aimed at vastly different audiences, Sandra Cisneros’s beloved coming-of-age story The House on Mango Street and Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao both uniquely capture the complexities of navigating the hyphenated territory between their respective Mexican-American and Dominican-American identities. Cisneros engages readers with the simple yet profound narrative voice of Esperanza in a series of vignettes that subtly reveal a growing consciousness of her role as a young Mexican-American woman and her creative consciousness as an artist. Through the multifaceted narrative perspective of Yunior, Díaz skillfully weaves together “ghetto nerd” Oscar de …

A Sumitography: A Listing Of Postage Stamps Celebrating Contributions To Civil And Human Rights By Martin Luther King Jr. And Associates, Lillie R. Jenkins

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

This "sumitography" (from Latin "sumit" means postage stamp) is a listing of postage stamps celebrating contributions to civil right and human rights by Martin Luther King Jr. and associates. In addition to USA postage stamps, this listing includes stamps from other nations, including Cuba, Ghana, Sweden, Turks & Caicos Islands, and others. Also included are postage stamps honoring King associates--in the struggle for civil and human rights, Mohandas K. Gandi, Rosa Partks, A. Philp Randolph, and Malcolm X.

Don't Call King A 'Civil Rights' Leader: Toward Abolishing Poverty And War By Correcting Our Fatally Inadequate Remembering Of Mlk Jr., Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Remembering Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—primarily as a domestic “civil rights” leader—is inadequate, and sometimes harmful. The term “civil rights” fails to embrace King’s abolitionist movements toward the global abolition of poverty and war. Moreover, King was a Baptist preacher called by God. He advanced an optimistic realism (including a “realistic pacifism”) that improves upon pessimistic-cynical versions of political realism. And King went beyond advancing “civil rights” to advancing economic justice, economic rights, and human rights. He prescribed adding a social and economic bill of rights to the US Constitution, plus full-employment supplemented by “guaranteed income,” …

Purgatorio, Rosie Pineda

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

Rodrigo Reyes’ provocative essay film re-imagines the Mexico/U.S. border as a mythical place comparable to Dante’s purgatory. Leaving politics aside, he takes a fresh look at the brutal beauty of the border and the people caught in its spell. By capturing a stunning mosaic of compelling characters and broken landscapes that live on the US/Mexico border, the filmmaker reflects on the flaws of human nature and the powerful absurdities of the modern world. An unusual border film, in the auteur tradition of camerastylo, Purgatorio ultimately becomes a fable of humanity, an epic and visceral experience with powerful and lingering images. …

“The Real Spice Girl, Hot Girl Power”: M.I.A. Singing The Subaltern Voice In The Euro-American Soundscape, Emma Niehaus

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak’s seminal work of Subaltern Studies, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” analyzed the predisposition of the “Western” academy to ultimately silence the voices, experiences, and cultures of colonized, “third world” and non- European “others”. Following Spivak’s work, other scholars examined subaltern speech as it manifested in various other cultural products for instance, music. Notably, subaltern scholars such as Rebecca Romanow and Amanda Weidman in “Can the Subaltern Sing” argued that aural space for the subaltern musician was shrinking in the face of a rapidly globalizing Euro-American music industry. My presentation argues that it is not a question of if …

Development Of A Literary Dispositif: Convening Diasporan, Blues, And Cosmopolitan Lines Of Inquiry To Reveal The Cultural Dialogue Among Giuseppe Ungaretti, Langston Hughes, And Antonio D’Alfonso, Anna Ciamparella

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to create a literary dialogue among the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, the African American author Langston Hughes, and the Quebecois writer Antonio D’Alfonso. Giuseppe Ungaretti and Langston Hughes were more or less contemporaries. Ungaretti was born in 1888 and Hughes in 1902, and both were active in modernist movements that shaped the literary history of their own countries. D’Alfonso was born in Canada about half a center after Ungaretti and Hughes. Besides significant generational differences, these three authors also underwent personal and intellectual experiences that shaped their writing in seemingly incomparable ways. While a traditional comparative approach …