Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Who’S Afraid Of Being Woke? – Critical Theory As Awakening To Erascism And Other Injustices, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

No abstract provided.

Editors' Introduction, Raj G. Chetty, Beverly Greene

Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

No abstract provided.

Answering The Calls For Inclusion From St. John's Students, Natalie P. Byfield

Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

No abstract provided.

Demon Mineral, Brady Desanti

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Demon Mineral (2024), directed by Hadley Austin.

“Now, What’S One Story I Wanted To Tell You?”: Oral History Exhibition Archives At The Chicago History Museum At The Turn Of The 21st Century, Arianne Nguyen

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Starting in the 1970s, American history museums have undergone a shift away from seeing themselves collections-focused historical societies acting as “temples to the past.” In the face of broader political challenges—civil rights, increasingly multicultural urban audiences, and the “culture wars” of the 1980s, public historians have sought to reclaim their institutions’ relevance by seeking to share their authority and mission with those “publics” they serve.

While secondary literature on public history has generally agreed that museums pulled off this shift—and museums themselves have touted successful exhibits and outreach—this essay uses a specific case study to complicate the narrative. The Chicago …

The Black American Revolution: The American Revolution As Experienced By African Americans, Amy Kurian

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

This paper focuses on how the American Revolution mobilized the enslaved and free black population in a way that constitutes a "Black American Revolution." In particular, the enslaved population engaged in multiple efforts for freedom, ranging from fighting in the Revolutionary War to writing petitions to state legislatures. First, I present how the "slavery metaphor" propagated by white Loyalists indicates the inherent differences in how the white and black populations experienced the Revolution. There is an overall discussion of the various methods the enslaved used in their attempts to gain freedom: military service, slave petitions, freedom suits, and escape. I …

Conflict, Resistance, And Resolve: Uncovering Lost Narratives In Japanese-American Internment, Hannah De Oliveira

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

By the end of 1942, the U.S. army and the national government had forcibly removed 120,000 Japanese descended individuals from their homes on the West Coast, confining them to ten internment camps across the nation. In an effort to construct a more accurate representation of the mindset of internees in the wartime era, my thesis hones in on conflict and division within camp life. I emphasize the heterogeneity of Japanese-American voices and push back against the oversimplification of the different internee subgroups: the Japan-born immigrants (“Issei”), U.S.-born citizens (“Nisei”), and Japan-educated Nisei who returned home before the war (“Kibei”). Throughout …

Death, Dreaming, And Diaspora: Achieving Orientation Through Afro-Spirituality, Liz Johnston, Jaime Elizabeth Johnston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Enslavement, colonization, and the systems that uphold racial injustice were and still are a series of new, unfathomable, and challenging experiences that prompt individuals within the diaspora to seek orientation. How does a human cope with centuries of attempts at the systematic destruction of their humanity, culture, and identity? How can they reclaim that identity, especially when so much of it seems lost? I address these questions by utilizing texts from the expansive body of work regarding ethnographic-historical-religious studies on Afro-spiritual practices to better analyze instances in literature in the ongoing practice of diasporic orientation. In this project, I argue …

Ai Meets Ai: Chatgpt As A Pedagogical Tool To Teach American Indian History, Jeffrey Washburn, Jennifer Monroe Mccutchen

Critical Humanities

Our paper illustrates how we used Artificial Intelligence to teach the tools of ethnohistory and highlight American Indian voices in our classrooms. It overviews our integration of ChatGPT in both survey and upper-level history courses at two different institutions: a small liberal arts college in the Midwest and a regional-comprehensive university in Texas. Though it acknowledges the benefits and pitfalls of using ChatGPT to teach Native American history, this article emphasizes the pedagogical value of large language models (LLMs) for student engagement and analytical thinking through a variety of critical review, peer review, and group annotation assessments; this included analyses …

Five-Step Guide To Writing About African Children: A Satirical Homage To Decolonizing Our Minds And Challenging Stereotypes, Randall Yesmont, Bright Alozie

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay is a work of satire, in the style of the late Binyavanga Wainaina’s “How to Write About Africa” and Bright Alozie’s “How to Write About Nigeria” and “How to Write About African Women.” In this satirical homage, we explore the pesky stereotypes that often accompany Western perceptions and writings about African children. We hope that stereotypes satirically highlighted in this piece shed light on the dangers of a single story while advocating for the recognition of the humanity, agency, voices, and dignity of African children.

Divisive Or Descriptive?: How Americans Understand Critical Race Theory, Alauna Safarpour, Kristin Lunz Trujillo, Jon Green, Caroline High Pippert, Jennifer Lin, James N. Druckman

Political Science Faculty Publications

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become a flashpoint of elite political discord, yet how Americans actually perceive CRT is unclear. We theorize that Republican elites utilized a strong framing strategy to re-define CRT as an “empty signifier” representing broader racial and cultural grievances. Using a survey and a pre-registered experiment among U.S. adults (N = 19,060), we find that this strategy worked. Republicans exhibit more familiarity with CRT and hold more negatively valenced (and wide ranging) sentiments toward CRT, relative to Democrats. Moreover, compared to teaching the legacy of racism in schools, Republicans are significantly more opposed to teaching CRT …

Effectively Affective: Examining The Ethos Of One Hbcu Writing Center, Karen Keaton Jackson, Amara Hand

The Writing Center Journal

Over the past several decades, writing center scholarship has evolved to include multiple theories and pedagogies that led to widely used best practices. As is the case in many disciplines, often writing centers at large, research PWIs are most often cited and highlighted within the scholarship. While many of those readings do offer helpful strategies for working with students at all levels, often they do not account for the unique contexts and diverse student populations that make up many HBCUs. As a result, more research from a variety of writing centers is needed so practitioners see there are multiple ways …

What Does It Mean To Talk About Tolkien And Diversity? A Look Within And Without The Legendarium, Yvette Kisor

Journal of Tolkien Research

“What Does It Mean to Talk about Tolkien and Diversity? A Look within and without the Legendarium” considers racial diversity by focusing on the structure of Tolkien’s universe, both how it is modelled on ancient and medieval concepts like the Great Chain of Being and the Declining Ages of Man, but also remakes those models. In addition, it considers responses to racial structures perceived in Tolkien’s work.

“And So My Soul Shall Rise”: Enslaved And Free African American Christianity Before Emancipation, Holly J. Lawson

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

The Christianity of enslaved and free African Americans in the years immediately following the first Great Awakening through the end of the Civil War (roughly 1750-1850) evidences a complex cultural fusion and a complicated theological depth. There were many different aspects of the religious and spiritual practices of these African American Christians, including preaching, baptism, ecstatic spiritual experiences, evangelism, violent and non-violent forms of resistance to slavery, and, possibly the most prevalent of all, music and singing. The hundreds of thousands of African people unwillingly brought to America brought with them their African heritage, but the survival of their African …

Determining Jury Impartiality In The Malice Green Murder Cases, Marco Cardamone

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

Detroit Police Department officers Walter Budzyn and Larry Nevers beat Black resident Malice Green to death in November 1992 and were convicted of second-degree murder, however, their convictions were overturned by appellate courts on the basis that the jury was influenced by outside sources. Race played a critical factor in the trials and public opinion as both officers were White and the judge, juries, and prosecutors were Black. While the evidence of the case suggests a wrongful death, public opinion in Detroit and exposure to media compromised the juries’ impartiality.

When Communities Fall: A Critical Analysis Of Toni Morrison's Sula, Sami Saigh

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

When women dare to self-actualize they frequently face barriers that tear their spirits down, leading to guilt, shame, and feelings of inadequacy. For the lineage of women in Toni Morrison’s Sula, these consequences are fatal for everyone. As these factors thwart fundamental social development, communal collapse becomes easier, leaving entire cultures vulnerable to erasure. Whether self-determination is expressed through promiscuity or properness, paradoxical moralism leaves no room for either. This essay explores how Morrison offers a retrospective look from the graveyard of a town while illustrating the impact of the loss of friends, lovers, and communities.

Jennifer Packer’S Unique Employment Of Color: How The Artist Uses Hue To Mystify And Politicize Simultaneously, Jackson Gifford

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

Jennifer Packer has immensely impacted the art world since her emergence a decade ago. An African American woman, Packer uses her art to depict, analyze, and complicate the intricacies of living in the United States as a Black person. Packer’s singular style of intimate portraits bordering on the abstract makes her work both intellectually and visually engaging. This essay argues that Packer uses color, through various techniques, to address the socio-political dilemmas she wants to get at in her work. At the same time, she uses these hues in abstraction to lift her paintings away from reality.

Double Consciousness, Mirrors, And The Children Within Them: A Conceptual Reading Of W. E. B. Du Bois's "As The Crow Flies", Adeline Navarro

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

This research essay argues that W. E. B. Du Bois’s Crow from his magazine column “As the Crow Flies” is a figurative device for double consciousness and examines how aspects of double consciousness are present in the frequent motifs of dialectic doubleness in the column. Drawing from scholar Rudine Sims Bishop, this essay explores how the Crow functions as a mirror that children can use to realize their own double consciousness and thus see themselves. This insight into Du Bois’s news column provides a further understanding of the significance of accessible, multicultural children’s literature.

Leveraging Devolution As A Pathway To The Management Of Homegrown Extremism Over Intractable Land-Use Conflicts In Chepyuk Settlement Schemes, Kenya, Graham Oluteyo Amakanji, Pontian G. Okoth, Edmond Maloba Were

Journal of African Conflicts and Peace Studies

In an era where globalization is producing homogeneity, ethnic differences continue to produce some of the most violent conflicts. Indeed, the post-cold war period was marked by a decline in interstate contestations. However, violent intra-state contestations have been on the upsurge. These are projected to further rise in the next two decades. Population explosion, urbanization, deteriorating land quality and adverse effects of climate change are set to catalyse these contestations. The African Continent is set to bear the brunt of these contestations. Rooted in a long historical quest for land rights spanning over 100 years, the carnage violent inter-communal conflicts …

Social Justice Autobiography, James Jones

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Social Justice autobiography on Civil rights; Muslim; social justice; racial hypocrisy; freedom

Social Justice Autobiography, Javar Hollins

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Social Justice essay on Jim Crow South; crack epidemic; inter-racial cooperation

Imagine!, Gerard Lawless

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Essay on imagination and freedom.

Her Story In Black (Matters), Kavan Garrison

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Novel on US Politics; Healthcare; COVID; Families/Children of the Incarceratd; Lawyers; Mental Health; Immigration; Prison life (gangs, violence, medical care/neglect); Rehabilitation; Activism/Reform

Stockholme Syndrome, Fontaine Baker

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Poem on Poetry; Education; Transformation

Lost In Time, Keefus Flax

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Poem on Prison life; Despair; Popular culture (music)

Social Justice Autobiography, Chanelle Burnett

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Social Justice Autobiography on: Women prisoners; Humane treatment; Social Justice; Health care; Criminal Justice; Rehabilitation; Reform; Hypocrisy

All For Nothing, Marina K. Leyba

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Poem on self-realization

Social Justice Autobiography, Lamont Kwesi Harrell

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Social Justice essay on Social Justice; Afrikan lifestyle and philophy; Marcus Garvey; Umoja- unity and (Ujamaa)cooperative economies

An International Call To Free Xinachtil, A Cause Celebre, Alvaro Luna Hernandez

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

A political pamphlet calling to end the incarceration of a political prisoner, Xinachtil, Alvaro Luna Hernandez. The pamphlet discusses the Chicana/o Movement, the struggle for Aztlan, and the role of the criminal justice system in suppressing social justice.

In The Mind Of A Prisoner, Christopher Gattos

Writing Beyond the Prison Living Archive

Law (Crime Bill, Felon Disenfranchisement, 13th Amendment, legal representation); Ku Klux Klan; Historical memory; Reform; Prison Life; Drugs (War on); Sentencing; Children of Incarcerated; BLM; Pop Culture/media; Prison Education; Rehabilitation; Forgiveness; Gun Violence; COVID 19