Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Marketplace Plants Used In Ceremonial Cleansing Among Andean Qechuans Of Ecuador, Sushma Shrestha

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Ceremonial cleansing plays a vital role in indigenous societies where ‘folk illnesses’ such as susto (fright) are common. Indigenous Andean Qechuans commonly use cleansing plants to treat susto, and related ‘folk illnesses’.The purpose of this study was to characterize and compare market plants and to define methods and knowledge used in ceremonial cleansing among Ecuadorian Qechuans. Interviews were conducted with 22 vendors at 13 marketplaces. Regression Analysis (RA) determined preferentially selected plant families and residual value of RA determined the highest and lowest preferentially selected plant families.Hierarchical cluster analysis and coefficient of similarity demonstrated the relationship between marketplaces and cleansing …

From Folding And Cutting To Geometry And Algorithms: Integrating Islamic Art Into The Mathematics Curriculum, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Drawing upon visual forms of expression prevalent in Islamic arts and architecture, this workshop offers handson experience for understanding basic concepts in geometry, with reference to algorithms in processes of patternmaking. Art teachers and math educators may learn a variety of strategies for classroom teaching, adaptable for K-12, to acquaint students with principles underlying patterns in Islamic art. Such patterns relate to the history of mathematics at a time when Baghdad was an intellectually vibrant center of patronage, and al-Khwarezmi was engaged in the development of what we now call algebra and algorithms. Students may explore these ideas through their …

These - Are - The "Breaks": A Roundtable Discussion On Teaching The Post-Soul Aesthetic, Bertram D. Ashe, Crystal Anderson, Mark Anthony Neal, Evie Shockley, Alexander Weheliye

English Faculty Publications

We met at Duke University - mid-summer, in the mid Atlantic, at mid-campus - to talk about teaching courses that focused on the post-soul aesthetic. We met outside the John Hope Franklin Center, and soon enough we five youngish black professors were walking a hallway towards a conference room near the African and African American Studies program. Not at all surprisingly, the walls of the hallway were lined with framed photographs of the esteemed John Hope Franklin at various stages throughout his long and storied career. For me, given the topic I was about to raise among these professional colleagues, …

"I Put The Tale Back Where I Found It": Feeling The Past Through "The Warmth Of The Human Voice", Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

In this article, I examine my revelations and growth related to folk culture and literature connected to the African American community. I borrow from and play on the Sudanese formulaic ending for the folktale; it seemed to me appropriate - even obligatory- that "I put the tale back where I found it." This maxim is symbolic, reflecting what I find one of the most characteristic elements of Black folklore - that is, the focus on the group, the community, in terms of the source of the historical situation of the tale; the moral lesson; the content, style, and delivery; and …

Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, And Survival By Meredith M. Gadsby (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

The folk will tell you that salt can either save you or destroy you. Toni Cade Bambara's Velma of The Salteaters realized that her survival depended on learning "the difference between eating salt as an antidote to snakebite and turning into salt, succumbing to the serpent." The lesson of similar folk wisdom is the subject of Meredith M. Gasby's Sucking Salt, where she propses as a new framework for the examination of Caribbean women's writing the survival techiniques implied in "sucking salt," techiniques suggested in her aunt's reflections on people she knew. Tantie expounded: "Little salt won't kill …

'The Senator And The Socialite: The True Story Of America's First Black Dynasty,' By Lawrence Otis Graham, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

Lawrence Otis Graham attempts to tell the important story of the Bruces and their legacy in The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty. Starting his story before the Civil War, Graham follows the “First Black Dynasty” through its ultimate fall from grace in mid-twentieth-century New York City. As with his previous bestseller, Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class (1999), Graham takes on the ambitious task of capturing the meaning and importance of an underappreciated group of American’s.

The Racialization Of Jimi Hendrix, Marcus K. Adams

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

The period of history immediately following World War Two was a time of intense social change. The end of colonialism, the internal struggles of newly emerging independent nations in Africa, social and political changes across Europe, armed conflict in Southeast Asia, and the civil rights movement in America were just a few. Although many of the above conflicts have been in the making for quite some time, they seemed to unite to form a socio-political cultural revolution known as the 60s, the effects of which continues to this day.

The 1960s was a particularly intense time for race relations in …

Repatriation Of Ethnic Groups, Kirsten Benites

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From 1943 to 1949, almost 1.5 million ethnic minorities were deported from their homes in the southern USSR to Central Asia. Thousands died either during the trip or within the first few years after their arrival. For years, it was as if they had simply disappeared off the face of the earth. It was not until 1956 that the deportations were even acknowledged by the Soviet government, and only recently has repatriation begun. While some groups have had a relatively successful repatriation experience, others have experienced ethnic discrimination, making the return to their homelands difficult and in some cases impossible.

Indigenous Scientific Literacies In Nalo Hopkinson’S Ceremonial Worlds, Grace L. Dillon

Indigenous Nations Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Increasingly our critical tradition is recognizing the prevalence of issues of indigeneity in sf. Whether this emerging emphasis reflects keener powers of observation on the part of readers or shifting preferences on the part of writers, it is clear that, as the idealism of a Golden Age melts into the dross of colonial aftermath, sf is beginning to reflect the West's rising awareness that manifest destinies, whatever fashion they wear, wield a violent science in pursuing control and care little for the cultures they displace and erase. Nor is it surprising that a genre noted for its pioneering exploration of …

Investigating The Heart Of A Community: Archaeological Excavations At The African Meeting House, Boston, Massachusetts, David B. Landon, Teresa Dujnic, Kate Descoteaux, Susan Jacobucci, Darios Felix, Marisa Patalano, Ryan Kennedy, Diana Gallagher, Ashley Peles, Jonathan Patton, Heather Trigg, Allison Bain, Cheryl Laroche

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

In collaboration with the Museum of African American History, an archaeological research team from the University of Massachusetts Boston carried out a data recovery excavation at the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill. The African Meeting House was a powerful social institution for 19thcentury Boston’s free black community. The site played an important role in the abolition movement, the creation of educational opportunity, and other community action for social and political equality. The Meeting House was originally built in 1806, and renovations in preparation for the 2006 bi-centennial celebration prompted an investigation of areas of the property to be impacted …

Far From The Commonwealth: A Report On Low-Income Asian Americans In Massachusetts, Michael Liu, Thao Tran, Paul Watanabe

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

Asian Americans are as diverse in history, language, class, ethnic origin, and demographics as any group in the United States. This complexity is reflected in their economic status. Much attention has focused on the significant economic attainments of many Asian Americans. The fact, however, that a large number of Asian Americans also live in poverty or have low incomes has received much less notice from researchers, foundations, government agencies, and others.

The principal purpose of this report is to bring attention to and shed more light on a significant sector of Asian Americans in Massachusetts, those with low incomes. We …

Bleeding Albina: A History Of Community Disinvestment, 1940‐2000, Karen J. Gibson

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Portland, Oregon, is celebrated in the planning literature as one of the nation’s most livable cities, yet there is very little scholarship on its small Black community. Using census data, oral histories, archival documents, and newspaper accounts, this study analyzes residential segregation and neighborhood disinvestment over a 60-year period. Without access to capital, housing conditions worsened to the point that abandonment became a major problem. By 1980, many of the conditions typically associated with large cities were present: high unemployment, poor schooling, and an underground economy that evolved into crack cocaine, gangs, and crime. Yet some neighborhood activists argued that …

2007 Aapp Monograph Series, John Mcfadden, Richard G. Deaner, Moody Crews, Dayna Anne Campbell, A. Taquesa Mcclain, Nancy E. Brown, Vida Mingo, Toby L. Nelson, Melissa B. Pearson, Lisa B. Randle, Fredrick A. Gardin, Valarie A. Mingo, Rex Nobles, Anita M. Rawls, Alexanderia T. Smith, Larry E. Jones Jr., Alvoy L. Bryan Jr.

Monograph Series

The African American Professors Program (AAPP) at the University of South Carolina is proud to publish the seventh edition of its annual monograph series. Furthermore, it is an honor to celebrate the remarkable tenth anniversary of AAPP through these manuscripts. The program recognizes the significance of offering its scholars a venue to engage actively in research and publish papers related thereto. Parallel with the publication of their refereed manuscripts is the opportunity to gain visibility among scholars throughout institutions worldwide.

Scholars who have contributed papers for this monograph are to be commended for adding this responsibility to their academic workload. …

Contributing Elements To The Success Of A Hispanic Community In Central New Jersey, Dulce Rodriguez

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Using Bibliotherapy To Positively Impact The Emergent Racial Identity Of African-American Children, Sarah Seung-Mcfarland

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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The Self-Perceived Leadership Style And Comprehensive Profile Of African-American Women In The Role Of President At Four-Year Historically Black Colleges And Universities (Hb Cus) In The United States, Tasha Chantey Toy

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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American Fantasies Of Masculine, Physical Labor And The Dangerous Bodies Of Pacific Island Whalemen In Roger Starbuck's The Golden Harpoon And Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Jennifer Schell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Throughout the nineteenth-century, writers, such as James Fenimore Cooper and Joseph C. Hart, fairly consistently appropriated the New England whaling industry for national purposes. They claimed the economic successes of the industry as American successes, and they positioned the whalemen as exemplary American workers. However, not all American whalemen were native-born Americans; some were foreign-born laborers. The presence of Polynesian workers and their racialized laboring bodies - often described as monstrous, grotesque, and repulsive - disrupted nationalistic appropriations of the whaling industry and its workers. What was so dangerous about these men was not just that were reputed to be …

Colonial Constructs And Legally Sanctioned Sexually Violent Consequences In R V. Edmondson, Nicholas Bonokoski

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

What kind of a system or process would portray a twelve-year-old girl from the Yellow Quill First Nation as a sexual threat to three twenty-something white men, who promising her a ride home, picked her up and got her drunk? The answer: The Canadian legal system. In R v Edmondson a twelve-year old Aboriginal girl, who was sexually assaulted by Dean Edmondson, Jeffrey Brown, and Jeffrey Kindrat from Tisdale Saskatchewan, was portrayed by the judge as a "sexual aggressor". This paper focuses on the trial of Dean Edmondson in which, according to Judge Kovatch, the girls "sexual aggression" led to …

Using The Novel To Teach Multiculturalism, Michelle Loris

English Faculty Publications

Description of a fourteen week course taught by Michelle Loris, professor of English at Sacred Heart University. The course, titled Recent Ethnic American Fictions, introduced students to several concepts from contemporary literary theory. The theories included New Criticism, Deconstruction, Cultural Studies, New Historicism, and Feminist Theory. The assumption was that these concepts would give students the tools to become critical readers, which would then provide them with a deeper understanding of these multicultural novels and their particular cultural contexts.

For a semester, reading and thinking about these multicultural novels engaged and challenged the students' assumptions about themselves and the …

Four Poems: Snakehead Fish; Departures; Capitol; And Preparations For Southeast Asia, Bryan Thao Worra

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

No abstract provided.

Representation In Kenya, Its Diaspora, And Academia: Colonial Legacies In Constructions Of Knowledge About Kenya's Coast, Jesse Benjamin

Faculty Articles

This paper explores the construction of knowledge in Kenya in the context and aftermath of colonialism and underdevelopment. Those communities that were politically and economically marginalized in Coast Province over the past century were also displaced in terms of academic opportunities, resulting in fewer social science scholars from Mijikenda and other non-Swahili communities in both Kenyan and diaspora universities. Underdevelopment studies in Africa and Kenya are briefly reviewed, and the colonial history of asymmetric social relations at coastal Kenya is traced. Finally, key debates over identity and history are examined within this context and shown to be exacerbated by diasporic …

Childhood Trauma And Its Reverberations In Bebe Moore Campbell's Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

Novelist Bebe Moore Campbell was only five when Emmett Till was murdered on August 28, 1955. But in Your Blues Ain't Like Mine (1992) she seeks to answer the question that black teenagers in Mississippi, and indeed many people from all over the United States, asked after seeing the photograph of Till's mutilated and bloated body: "How could they do that to him? He's only a boy" (Dittmer 58). Campbell embraces the view that Lillian Smith expressed in Killers of the Dream (1949): "The warped, distorted frame we have put around every Negro child from birth is around every white …

Theorizing The Post-Soul Aesthetic: An Introduction, Bertram D. Ashe

English Faculty Publications

It's time. Clearly, it's time. As I begin this introduction, in the spring of 2006, landmark anniversaries press in on me from every side: 20 years ago, Greg Tate wrote "Cult-Nats Meet Freaky-Deke: the Return of the Black Aesthetic" for the Village Voice in the fall of 1986. And Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It - that totemic post-soul anthem - was released in the summer of 1986, as well. More personally, I first taught Trey Ellis's essay "The New Black Aesthetic" in 1991,15 years ago, and I inaugurated my post-soul aesthetic course in the Spring semester of 1996 - …

Constructing Black Selves: Caribbean American Narratives And The Second Generation By Lisa D. Mcgill (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Using second generation Americans Harry Belafonte, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Piri Thomas, and the meringue hip hop group Proyecto Uno, Lisa D. McGill considers in Constructing Black Selves: Caribbean American Narratives and the Second Generation the issues of identity formation of those whose heritage ultimately includes Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, most often New York City. Though her subjects come from different national, racial, and language backgrounds; though they have made their names in different media; and though they have different views of race, identity, and culture, she convincingly makes the argument that "African America becomes powerful site …

Edward Said And The Study Of Music, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

My first encounter with Edward Said’s work was in the 1980s with the book, Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975). I was exploring a semiotic approach to late 18^th-century music, specifically, a beginning-middle-ending paradigm (an Aristotelian paradigm) that seemed to me to capture the rhetorical intentions of Classic composers. Said’s wide-ranging reflections and ruminations on beginnings – as inaugural moments, as sites for the establishment of difference, as authorially privileged moments, and as "first steps in the intentional production of meaning" – proved inspiring. My enduring impression of him at the time was that he was a very good …

Interrupting Ethnographic Spectacles In Eric Valli's Himalaya, Puspa Damai

English Faculty Research

How can we talk about "postcoloniality" in relation to Nepal, which, even though it has never been foreign to Western fantasies about the exotic, was never formally colonized? One of the ways could be to create narratives and deploy images - as has been done by Eric Valli in his popular film Himalaya- that foreground geographically remote and ethnically and politically marginalized people of the nation. And yet, this article argues, such an attempt as Himalaya could easily fall into the same trap as grips orientalist ethnography that seeks to generate spectacles of the other for its own pleasure. …

A Multiple Belonging: New Representations Of National Identity In Contemporary International And Irish Art Practice, Ciara Healy

Masters

In the late 1980’s, flying somewhere over the ocean on one of my many journeys to visit family in Ireland, I wrote this Haiku. Some years later, I re-read it while sitting in my studio surrounded by scraps of old travel tickets, letters and other ephemera. Looking at the poem once again, I began to wonder about home and to which, if any, I belonged. Late one evening, listening to the voices on BBC Radio 4 crackle over the air waves into my damp Dublin studio, I looked out at the construction sites for the city’s new steel and granite …

Book Review - Lee, S. (2005) Up Against Whiteness: Race, School, And Immigrant Youth, Chang Pu

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

No abstract provided.

Cross-Linguistic Analysis Of Vietnamese And English With Implications For Vietnamese Language Acquisition And Maintenance In The United States, Giang Tang

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Two overall goals of this paper are a) to provide a linguistic basis for promoting first language maintenance of Vietnamese in a larger United States context and b) to stimulate future research in language acquisition of Vietnamese-English speakers. This paper is divided into three sections. Section 1 discusses previous studies on first language (L1) maintenance among Vietnamese Americans. Section 2 presents a cross-linguistic comparison of Vietnamese and English across speech-sound, word, and grammatical language levels. A cross-linguistic analysis may help educators better understand speaking patterns of Vietnamese American students. Based on this cross-linguistic comparison, Section 3 presents potential bi-directional interactions …

"Khmer Pride": Being And Becoming Khmer-American In An Urban Migrant Education Program, Theresa Ann Mcginnis

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This article focuses on the ways an urban migrant education program becomes a space where middle school Khmer students can explore who they are as Khmer youth living in an urban American context. I discuss how the youth are able to take a transformative, interactional stance to the literacy and sign-making practices within the program. I argue that the Khmer youth's identities are reflected within these literacy and expressive practices. Further, I suggest the experiences of these Khmer middle school children of agricultural workers provide rich examples of how immigrant youth draw on a variety of cultural resources (from urban …