Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Pioneers Of Evacuation, Pioneers Of Resettlement: The Photographic Archive Of The Japanese American Incarceration And The Settler Colonial Imaginary, Christina Hobbs

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reexamines the photographic archive of the Japanese American incarceration during World War II produced by the US government, arguing that these images “restage” the evacuation, incarceration, and resettlement periods through a settler colonial “pioneer” mythology, thereby obscuring the precarity of Japanese Americans' racial positionality between “settler” and “native.”

The Flow Of (Re)Memory In African American And Nubian Egyptian Literature: Morrison, Oddoul, And Mukhtar, Bushra Hashem

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to define the term rememory, which Toni Morrison coins in her novel Beloved, and explore its interplay with water imagery in the novel and in two Nubian short stories, namely Haggag Oddoul’s “The River People” and Yahya Mukhtar’s “The Nile Bride.” The three narratives have core common features: they centralize water bodies as key sites of events, they depend heavily on the retelling of history and mythology, and they are told predominantly from the perspective of women. How do the writers weave rememory, history, and mythology to produce these narratives? Are they attempting to …

Ambiguity Of Vision: Reimagining The Hypervisible Void, Kiwha Lee Blocman

Theses and Dissertations

Asking questions about what Painting is in the 21st century and the dominant narratives it can challenge, my paintings complicate the viewer’s reading of pictorial hierarchy and the projection of human relations in the world. I de-hierarchize and decentralize the compositional components that make up a painting by using patterns to create spatial depth, not European perspectival conventions. In dialogue with modernists such as Matisse who drew from the visual vocabulary of “The Orient”, my central forms derived from architecture and ornamental fragments possess a body-like presence. Further, I reinvent ancient Asian printmaking processes with oil paint. Observing the tenets …

Norm And The People, Jacqueline N. Wade

Theses and Dissertations

Norm and the People is a 90-minute hybrid film about the Minister and activist Norman Eddy and the work he and other activists did in Spanish Harlem from the 1940s through his death in 2013. The film is told through interviews, archival photos and videos, reenactments, and puppets.

Freestyle's Forsaken, Sage D. Rivera

Theses and Dissertations

Freestyle is a genre of music born in the mid-1980s from Latino and Black communities in the urban epicenters of the United States. This project spotlights a freestyle music artist “Corina," and how she suffered a patriarchal construct but finally got the moment of significance she deserved.

A Parar Para Avanzar: To Stop/To Stand/To Strike To Advance, Christina N. Barrera

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents the first fragments of a political framework outlining how I situate my work, which lives between “craft” and “art” models of making and between colonized and colonizing traditions. My writing proposes ways of making and being informed by practices, strategies, and organizing that work towards greater autonomy and liberation under these conditions.

Black And Silver Screens: Afropessimism And Filmic Appropriation In Contemporary Video Art, Madeleine A. Seidel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis looks at the video works of artists Ulysses Jenkins, Ina Archer, and Garrett Bradley and their appropriation of images of Black actors in Classic Hollywood films through the theoretical framework of afropessimism.

I Still Love You, Despite Everything, Amy Bravo

Theses and Dissertations

My practice seeks to reconcile the family—be it a found, queer family, or blood relatives. Addressing ancestral conflict, the complications of US/Cuba relations and my physical and cultural distance from the island I hail from, my work offers another world for communing with those you cannot physically reach.

Sondra Perry: On The Limits And Possibilities Of Access, Visibility, And Freedom, Sigourney Schultz

Theses and Dissertations

Sondra Perry: On the Limits and Possibilities of Access, Visibility, and Freedom connects the intellectual history of cyberfeminism and Afrofuturism with the future of post-Black studies by exploring themes such as the abstraction of blackness and the materiality of new media.

Formations Of The Mayan Diaspora In Guatemala And The Us: Land, Migration, And Linguistic Ideologies As The Markers Of Diasporic Separation., Daniel Antipov

Theses and Dissertations

This work examines the phenomenon of diaspora formation among the indigenous Guatemalan population as a major identity marker in the new Guatemalan immigrants in the US. This work provides: definition of diaspora, its historical frames, juxtaposition of the self and the Other, and separation and differentiation of the indigenous languages

Memorias De Mi Familia, Melissa Z. Montero

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Memorias de Mi Familia is an hour-long personal documentary through which I explore the meaning of “home.” I was born and raised in New York to a Puerto Rican mother and Ecuadorian father and lived between two worlds—sometimes more. While on a visit to Puerto Rico with my mother, Sylvia, I search for belonging and explore my family’s story of migration between the island and the United States.

Through interviews, family films, home videos and photographs spanning over 60 years, I examine the revolving migration pattern common to many Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora, a …

Original Intent: Brown Vs. Board Of Education, White Backlash, & The Enduring Power Of De Facto Segregation, Aaron Brand

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the factors and outcomes surrounding Brown v. Board of Education of 1954. The events that predated it and the resistance that followed determined the chain of consequences from this perceived victory over racial bias. The calculated and persistent backlash against integration obscured Brown’s intent of educational opportunity.

The Changing Evaluations Of Black Skin, White Masks Throughout History, Paul Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

Black Skin, White Masks, produced in 1952 by Frantz Fanon is an iconic piece of decolonization literature in which he speaks out against the physical, psychological, social, and economic effects of colonialism in Africa and evaluations of his work have continually evolved throughout the last 70 years. From 1952 to 1960, evaluations of his book was mostly confined in France, then in 1960 to 1968 his work was actively used in America as a guide on achieving political freedom for African Americans and analyzing the Civil Rights Movement and by 1990 onward, his book has been used to analyze …

Examining Motivators That Influenced African American And Latinx Students To Degree Completion Of A Doctoral Program, Travis L. Stokes

Theses and Dissertations

This applied dissertation was designed to provide an investigation of the motivators that influence African American and Latinx students to complete a doctoral program. There are numerous studies that show data on low enrollment and retention of this population. Further, there is ample evidence of attrition, but there is a need to hear their voices share the experiences of successful doctoral graduates from this population.

The researcher posited systemic racism in education caused low enrollment and graduation rates among African American and Latinx students. Then, an interview protocol was developed to elicit responses regarding what caused the persistence to complete …

Roots And Webs And Nets And Branches And Bulletin Boards And Banners And Newsletters And Mutual Aid Text Threads And Kin And Caretakers And Porches And Poems Of Today And Spaces Of Survival, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo

Theses and Dissertations

As I welcome Richmond, VA into my family, I find myself needing to make roots and webs and nets and branches that ground me, that place myself as a Black, queer, mixed race, artist, activist, educator, storyteller, and cultural worker in this city. I am called to the streets before I am called to my studio. I question what it means to be a part of an institution that is slowly eating this city up. I become a story collector. I need to know where I am and whose land I now call home.

Childhood Reliquary De Una Catracha/Mexi Entre Nopales, Juliana Bustillo

Theses and Dissertations

Childhood Reliquary De Una CatrachaMexi Entre Nopales is a multisensory based installation consisting of three large and six medium scale mixed media paintings with performance. It is informed by my upbringing in Boyle Heights in the projects during the 90s, followed by East LA in the mid 2000s. It is the reliquary for my discomfort in institutional spaces and why I have found comfort in dystopian-like installations. This is the landscape in which I exist, regardless of where I am now. It is where I place my work. It is the context in which I celebrate the powerful delicacy of …

An Exploration Of A Researcher-Instructor Partnership In Implicit Racial Bias Awareness And Mitigation In College Stem Classrooms, Jacqueline Johnson Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

Seventy-six percent of all minority students who enter college with declared majors in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) do not graduate with STEM degrees. Black students represent 40% of minority attrition from STEM. Implicit racial bias was indicated as a contributor to the challenges faced by Black students. The purpose of this study was to explore whether a researcher-instructor partnership brought awareness to and the potential for mitigation of implicit racial bias in course delivery and instructor interactions with Black students in STEM classes. A case study design was used over three phases to gather survey, observational, and interview …

Boundary As Borderland: Mexico City’S Central Plaza And The Politics Of Presence, Re'al Christian

Theses and Dissertations

In the postcolonial era, the land surrounding national borders—the borderland—has inherited a specific identity and relationship with those who navigate it. While national borderlands are oft discussed amid conversations on globalization, land disputes, and war, the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the new establishment of borderlands from within in the form of segregative boundaries that purported to separate Indigenous and European peoples. This thesis concerns the manifestation of the borderland as not only an external entity, but an internal one as well. Using Mexico City, the center of the Spanish colonial empire, as …

For Civilization And Citizenship: Emancipation, Empire, And The Creation Of The Black Citizen-Soldier Tradition, Henry Ian Davis

Theses and Dissertations

For civilization and citizenship: emancipation, empire, and the creation of the black citizen-soldier tradition examines the origins and evolution of black military service and its relation to how black and white Americans understood citizenship from the Civil War Era to the First World War. This dissertation analyzes how different generations of black soldiers pursued full, civic citizenship through their military service and formed their own vision of citizenship rooted in military service and how the War Department sought to deal with the tensions created by a biracial Army. While it asserts that a separate, black citizen-soldier tradition linking service and …

Misunderstood: A Phenomenological Study On Intersectionality And The Lived Experiences Of Black Millennial Student Affairs Professionals At Pwis, Emily P. Dixon

Theses and Dissertations

This applied dissertation was designed to further understand the lived experiences of Black millennial student affairs professionals navigating and advancing through a predominately white institution in the southern United States. This phenomenological study, framed by critical race theory and intersectionality, sought to ultimately use these lived experiences to advocate for change. A review of the literature highlighted the needs, values, and experiences of Black Millennials based on both identities, the experiences of working in student affairs/higher education with these experiences, and the need for intentional diversity efforts by higher educational institutions.

The researcher interviewed nine participants to learn more about …

Marketing Race In British History: An Analysis Of The British Empire Marketing Board Posters (1926-1933), Jules Matthew Maffei

Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary instances of racially charged product imagery are deeply intertwined with history. Products like "Aunt Jemima", "Uncle Ben's Rice", or the indigenous peoples portrayed on "Land O' Lakes" butter affects perception of race, class, and gender. The continued existence of these controversially branded products helps to construct attitudes about these subjects and demonstrates a societal acceptance of these as norms. The British Empire Marketing Board (EMB) represents an important historical example of the production of such racialized values. Between 1926 and 1933, the EMB created and disseminated marketing materials to promote intra-Empire trade. While the EMB was generally considered to …

The Adobe Frontier, Christopher J. Gauthier

Theses and Dissertations

The Adobe Frontier is a documentary film about Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello—together known as “Studio Rael San Fratello” —and their work connecting contemporary technology with the legacy of pottery making and adobe architecture in the Southwest United States.

Fractured Selves, Gearoid Dolan

Theses and Dissertations

Fractured Selves is a self-portrait that examines the histories and points of conflation and diversion of my four public personas. In the style of a Zoom meeting, they chat with a host against animated backgrounds. Interactivity creates non-linear consuming of the content and user directed navigation through four timelines

To The Studio, In The Studio, Home, Miquel R. Veldkamp

Theses and Dissertations

A curated series of poems and mini essays that reflect on personal life, politics, art history, folklore, science, identity and race. It addresses the questions that inform my work, and echoes its ethos of play, exploration, curiosity, vulnerability.

How Hbo's A Black Lady Sketch Show Utilizes Humor To Cope And Resist Against Racism And Sexism, Regina Lynnette Sanders

Theses and Dissertations

HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show is a sketch comedy series with a cast and crew of Black women. I draw on rhetorical scholarship from various traditions and Black Feminist Standpoint to analyze how the writers and performers use humor imbued with African American rhetoric to cope with and resist systematic racism and sexism in the United States of America. I begin by analyzing interviews with the creator Robin Thede. Then I analyze sketches and the intentional use of African American rhetoric, such as rhythm, stylin’, indirection, call and response, signification, and double word choice, which leads me to three …

Womanist Ways In A Man's World: Unpacking Anti-Blackness In Higher Education Enrollment Management Roles, Mesha C Garner

Theses and Dissertations

This study evaluated the phenomenon of anti-Black womanism in enrollment management at Historically White Institutions (HWIs) for Black women professionals. The qualitative study was conducted to understand dialectical functions of enrollment management and the dialectical responsibilities that Black women have while working in enrollment management. The theoretical framework of anti-Black womanism guided this study. Anti-Black womanism is a dual lens of BlackCrit (Dei, 2017; Dumas and Ross, 2016) and Womanism (Phillips, 2006). Furthermore, this study comprised the historical perspective and acknowledged the settler-colonial complex to best conceptualize the perceptions of Black people, particularly Black women. This study included 10 participants, …

Morkovcha [Korean Carrot Salad], Lidiya A. Kan

Theses and Dissertations

Morkovcha, Korean Carrot Salad is a short documentary that tells a story of ethnic Koreans from Russia and the post-Soviet territories making their new home in New York City. The history of the diaspora is told through conversations with my mother, personal stories, fragmented memories, and my family photo archive. This very personal film is my attempt to revisit the 160-year history of the Russian Korean diaspora and to record and preserve our unique fusion of cultures in the melting pot that is the United States. Its purpose is to help to process and accept the tragic past of my …

In Order To Escort Her, Kimberly Baglieri

Theses and Dissertations

In Order To Escort Her is a thirty-five minute hybrid-documentary in which Lila, my great-aunt, converses with her niece, my mother, about various supernatural creature encounters and spirit visitations from relatives. This is interspersed with a “visitation” from another close relative, communicating from a different time and space dimension. By weaving together supernatural stories and matter-of-fact accounts of resilience and survival, a magical world is created where boundaries between the material and the invisible realms blur. The main thematic concerns of this film are love, care, presence in joy amidst terror, and the journey of the soul.

Gus Solomons Jr.: Analyzing The Dances Of An Early Black Postmodernist, Zsuzsanna Orban

Theses and Dissertations

Gus Solomons jr. was one of the first Black dancers to participate in the Judson Dance Theater workshops, but was never fully integrated into the white, postmodern dance world. This thesis looks at several of his works which exemplify his use of site-specificity and innovative technologies, including dual-screen video dances.

Us, Abundantly: From Africa To The Americas, Karisma Jay

Theses and Dissertations

"Us, AbunDantly," a Live theatrical dance performance and film, delves into the African Diaspora and its influences. An artistic and academic project built upon the amplification of Black excellence and Black pride, this paper contextualizes a work within the oral histories and contemporary dance studies of a powerfully ancestral community.