Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Imagining Margaret Garner: The Tragic Life Of An American Woman, Cecilia M. Smith

History in the Making

There is limited information on the life of the nineteenth century female slave with most details compiled from the narratives of well-known women such as Sojourner Truth. Professor Erlene Stetson and other historians argue that scholars treat slavery as a male phenomenon and the female is merely looked upon as a breeder, while noted African-American activist Angela Davis calls for a more accurate portrayal to debunk derogatory myths. This paper addresses the issue of image with the argument that the enslaved African-American woman possessed no image of her own. It focuses on the story of a runaway female slave named …

Militarizing Marriage : West African Soldiers’ Conjugal Traditions In Modern French Empire, Sarah J. Zimmerman

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Following tirailleurs sénégalais’ deployments in West Africa, Congo, Madagascar, North Africa, Syria-Lebanon, Vietnam, and Algeria from the 1880s to 1962, Militarizing Marriage historicizes how African servicemen advanced conjugal strategies with women at home and abroad. Sarah J. Zimmerman examines the evolution of women’s conjugal relationships with West African colonial soldiers to show how the sexuality, gender, and exploitation of women were fundamental to the violent colonial expansion and the everyday operation of colonial rule in modern French Empire.

These conjugal behaviors became military marital traditions that normalized the intimate manifestation of colonial power in social reproduction across the empire. Soldiers’ …

Confederate Statues Are Monuments To The ‘Lost Cause’ Cult Of White Supremacy, Judith Ezekiel

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Remembering John Lewis 07-18-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Finding Commonality: The First Principles Of The Leadership Thought Of Theodore Roosevelt And Traditional Chinese Culture, Elizabeth Summerfield, Yumin Dai

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This paper argues that, while the imperative to find global solutions to complex problems like climate change and resource management is agreed, dominant ethical and intellectual thought leadership in many western nations impedes progress. The Cartesian binaries of western post-Enlightenment culture tend instead toward oppositional binary divides where each ‘side’ assumes to be the whole and not a part. And the present and future similarly assume precedence over the past. The paper points to systems thinking as both a method and a practice of wise leadership of past western and eastern societies, including their conservation of natural resources. Two historical …

White Saviors, Brandon Hasbrouck

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

It is time for Washington and Lee University to drop both George Washington and Robert E. Lee from the University name. The predominantly White faculty at Washington and Lee recently announced that it will petition the Board of Trustees to remove Lee from the University name. This is the first time in Washington and Lee’s history that the faculty has drafted such a petition. It is worth exploring why the faculty has decided to make a collective statement on Lee now and why the faculty has not included a demand to drop Washington in their petition. The answer is simple—it …

Female Monarchs And Merchant Queens In Africa, Nwando Achebe

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

An unapologetically African-centered monograph that reveals physical and spiritual forms and systems of female power and leadership in African cultures.

Nwando Achebe’s unparalleled study documents elite females, female principles, and female spiritual entities across the African continent, from the ancient past to the present. Achebe breaks from Western perspectives, research methods, and their consequently incomplete, skewed accounts, to demonstrate the critical importance of distinctly African source materials and world views to any comprehensible African history. This means accounting for the two realities of African cosmology: the physical world of humans and the invisible realm of spiritual gods and forces. That …

Mcgirt V. Oklahoma, United States Supreme Court, Neil M. Gorsuch

US Government Documents Related to Indigenous Nations

This United States (US) Supreme Court case, decided July 9, 2020, clarified the boundaries of Indigenous land within the state of Oklahoma (OK) and, by extension, the limits of Oklahoma’s jurisdictional reach. Following the perpetration of his crimes in 1997, Oklahoma state court convicted Jimcy McGirt of three sexual offenses; however, McGirt contended that the state lacked the jurisdiction to try him for these crimes because he is an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation and because his crimes took place on the Creek Reservation (Muscogee Nation). Oklahoma argued that although an 1883 Treaty established a section of land for …

Her-Story: The Forgotten Part Of The Civil Rights Movement, Elizabeth Guzman

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

Kobe Bryant, Benjamin Shultz

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

Toni Morrison, Cindy Ortega

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

A War From Within: An Analysis Of The Factors That Caused The Collapse Of The Iroquois Confederacy, Jessica Howe

History in the Making

This report hopes to answer the question, how and why one of the most powerful and long lasting Native American Confederacy collapsed during the Revolutionary War? This paper investigates how the economy, diplomatic disunification, and the deterioration of traditional religious beliefs through Christianity caused the Iroquois Confederacy to crumble. Although many others have attempted to answer this question, this research is different in that it relies heavily upon both historical and anthropological sources providing it with a unique interdisciplinary perspective. Furthermore, the specific context of this paper is also distinctive and is supported by primary and secondary sources. The narrow …

Reconstruction Embattled: The Memphis Race Massacre Of 1866 In The Press And Tennessee's First Year Of Interracial Democracy.", Morgan Nicole Baxter

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The racial violence that occurred in Memphis, Tennessee on the first three days of May 1866 was no sudden accident. Following the abolition of slavery and the fall of the Confederacy, race riots and racial violence in general intensified as a result of fluctuating race relations in southern states whose social hierarchies were built upon the degradation and supposed inferiority of blacks. The Memphis Massacre of 1866 was one such expression of white anger and bitterness over the disenfranchisement of former Confederates, the increasing numbers of educated, wealthy blacks coming into Memphis, and the disturbance of the old status quo …

Humanism In The Americas, Carol W. White

Faculty Contributions to Books

This chapter provides an overview of select trends, ideas, themes, and figures associated with humanism in the Americas, which comprises a diversified set of peoples, cultural traditions, religious orientations, and socio-economic groups. In acknowledging this rich tapestry of human life, the chapter emphasizes the impressive variety of developments in philosophy, the natural sciences, literature, religion, art, social science, and political thought that have contributed to the development of humanism in the Americas. The chapter also features modern usages of humanism that originated in the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century. In this context, humanism is best viewed as a contested …

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 …

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

Desegregation Through Entertainment: Rodgers And Hammerstein’S South Pacific As An Instrument Of Military Policy, Leana Sottile

Voces Novae

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific became a staple of mainstream popular culture. However, the musical also served a specific function within the American military where its usage by the United Service Organizations and Department of Defense was widespread. This case study examines how South Pacific arguably served a way to ease the blow of desegregation on the military by other means, in this case, entertainment. This was achieved by combining the show’s progressive views on racial tolerance with the prevalent wartime nostalgia and romanticism in the piece. All of …

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.

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 …

“Oceania Is Us:” An Intimate Portrait Of Chamoru Identity And Transpacific Solidarity In From Unincorporated Territory: [Lukao], Maressa Park

The Criterion

Guåhan’s history of Spanish colonization and inflicted genocide, Japanese occupancy, and American militarization poses profound effects on CHamoru land, rights, physical health, and language survival. These include instances of “celebration colonialism” such as Liberation Day, in which CHamorus celebrate the date that the United States dropped 124 tons of bombs on Guåhan to liberate them from the Japanese ([lukao] 44). Through an analysis of his 2017 anthology from unincorporated territory: [lukao], this essay examines how Dr. Craig Santos Perez casts light on the complex inheritance of native CHamorus via an intimate portrait of diasporic CHamoru identity. Furthermore, I argue that …

Colonial Articulations: Race, Violence, And Coloniality In Kafka's "Penal Colony", Marshall Pierce

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

Franz Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony” has been widely, even exhaustively studied. However, there is a dearth of analysis which stresses the centrality of the colony as a site, and race as a structure, in this text in a sustained and appropriately nuanced manner. While Kafka’s work is often read as representing universal conditions of domination and alienation, this paper argues that “In the Penal Colony” illustrates specific political processes and relations which belong to colonial and racialized orders of power. Reading “In the Penal Colony” alongside theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe, and Saidiya Hartman, this …

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.

Sedentary Flesh: Nineteenth-Century French Orientalists And Bodies Of The Female Other, Amelia Aitchison

The Forum: Journal of History

As visual texts of subjectivity and ideology, paintings are uniquely useful tools for historical analysis. Peaking in popularity in nineteenth-century Europe, the enduring erotic mystification of the Turkish seraglio manifested frequently in the form of paintings. At this time, French academicism and realism rose in status internationally and, bolstered by the esteem of the Paris Salon and the competitiveness generated by the advent of photography, so too did elaborately (and misleadingly) detailed depictions of the Orient. This paper concerns the inherent politics of French depictions of Turkish odalisques, focusing on the orientalist discourse generated by the quasi-realistic style of nineteenth-century …

Mai Te Kopu O Te Wahine: Considering Maori Women And Power, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku

Pacific Studies

Moko kauae: female Maori facial tattoo. This is the subtle power of maintaining a femininity that offends, that endures, that persists in the face of the settlers’ and invaders’ descendants; threatens sensibility and comfort levels; and continues to fascinate and challenge, charm and repel. Whether or not they were aware doing this, the elderly women who continued to inscribe their faces into the final decades of the past century and wear their identity and heritage with pride, were effectively confronting the colonizer and saying, we are here, and we will never ever go away. My face may make you uncomfortable, …

Original Gangsters: Genre, Crime, And The Violences Of Settler Democracy, Sean M. Kennedy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Building upon examinations of genericity, subalternity, and carcerality by Black, Indigenous, and women-of-color feminist scholars, my dissertation offers an account of how truth claims are produced and sustained to limit social change in representatively governed societies. Taking the gangster genre as my lens, I first resituate the form, assumed to depict white-ethnic conflict in the U.S. and Europe, as a type of resistance to race-based political economic policies imposed by imperial regimes. After linking the subaltern classes of pre-20th-century southern Europe, southern Africa, South Asia, and the U.S. South—all subjected to criminalization as a mode of colonial and capitalist control—I …

“The Amazing Iroquois”: Haudenosaunee History In Myth And Memory, 1776–1955, John C. Winters

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project is a history and memory study of Iroquois exceptionalism. This is an idea that shaped our understanding of the Iroquois as the “most studied” Indian nation and that they, as the debunked Iroquois Influence Thesis claimed, influenced the structure and scope of the U.S. Constitution. My study examines the lives of four related (by blood and by claim) Seneca leaders: Red Jacket, Ely S. Parker, Harriet Maxwell Converse, and Arthur C. Parker. These four stand out because each was one of the most famous Native Americans of their generation who worked within and against American colonial society and …

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. …

Reflections On Women, Power, And Faith In Prechristian And Postchristian Polynesia, Penelope Schoeffel

Pacific Studies

In this article, I aim to draw attention to the scholarship of Alan Hanson and Neil Gunson, demonstrating that throughout pre-Christian Polynesia, chiefly women—even more so than chiefly men—possessed great mana and the powers to make or remove tapu. Gunson identified many great women chiefs and rulers in ancient Polynesia believed to have been descended from the gods. Hanson showed that the tapu on women in ancient Eastern Polynesian societies was because of their dangerous affinity to the gods. The missionary notion that pre-Christian Polynesians were mired in darkness led to the subordination of women when Christianity replaced the religious …

Women, Power, And Place In Polynesia: Articulations From Samoa And Aotearoa, New Zealand, Melani Anae, Penelope Schoeffel

Pacific Studies

Introduction for the Vol. 43, No 1-Jun 2020 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

“Filling Up The Other Kete”: Ambivalence, Critical Memory, And The Resilience Of Older Māori Jewish Women, Hadas Ore

Pacific Studies

This article is part of the first study on the memories that Māori Jews share growing up and living in contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand as well as the effect of their memories on their well-being and success in life. The study was conducted through open-ended in-depth interviews during 2016–2017. Examining more closely how six older women negotiate power and constitute indigenous agency, the analysis in this article looks into the particular way they employ their critical memory in order to overcome their ambivalence toward tertiary education. In my analysis, I apply the recent development in the theory of nostalgia with empirical …