“The Direful Spectacle Of The Wrack”: Teaching Against Colonialism Through Shipwrecks And Shakespeare, Sara A. Rich

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

It has become increasingly apparent that anti-colonial and anti-racist pedagogies are necessary in higher education classrooms, and honors education as an experimental zone is an ideal place to test ideas that can be taken into the wider university community. Honors professors epitomize the teacher-scholar model, and this paper presents a six-year trajectory of anti-colonial pedagogy coupled with original interdisciplinary research in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Bringing canonical Shakespeare into conversation with historical shipwrecks and their aftermath, students learn how The Tempest was written at a pivotal point in history, coincidentally situated in the same year as the earliest …

Marginalized First-Time Honors Students Explain The Impact Of Tracking Labels, Trina Sotirakopulos

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Many of the variables that determine college admission are beyond a student’s control, including the academic track they were assigned as early as primary school, a practice often referred to as “ability grouping” or constructing “skills-homogeneous” classes. Even in higher education, students feel the effects of unequal sorting and sifting from tracking. The purpose of this study was to learn from marginalized community college students placed in low- and middle-track courses in high school how taking honors courses for the first time shaped their perceptions of their identities. Data were gathered from a single cohort at a midwestern community college …

On The Ordinariness Of Murdering The Black Psyque And Flesh: Antiblackness In Educational Policy And Practice In Brazil, Colombia And Ecuador, Éllen Daiane Cintra, Mauri Balanta Jaramillo, Ethan Johnson

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper seeks to understand how anti-blackness has manifested in Brazilian, Colombian and Ecuadorian education based on analyzes of the education of ethnic-racial relations in these three countries. We start from the recognition of dynamics of violence that position Black people as socially dead (PATTERSON, 1982) in the afterlife of slavery (HARTMAN, 2007). Next, we analyze aspects of education and legal apparatus regarding ethnic-racial relations within education. We conclude that the lens of antiblackness (SHARPE, 2016; WILDERSON, 2010; VARGAS, 2020) in education advances analysis of the antagonistic and paradigmatic relationship that positions Black people as a problem and uneducable (DUMAS, …

"The Feminist Coven Did It": Nigerian Women's Feminist Leadership And Coalition Against Police Brutality During The 2020 #Endsars Protests, Bright Alozie

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The 2020 #EndSARS protest—a movement against police brutality and state violence in Nigeria—is an excellent locale for the historical study of African women’s activism and contributions to social movements. Young Nigerian women actively spearheaded this movement. Employing oral history methods, social media, and other primary sources, I place these women at the center of the narratives surrounding the #EndSARS protest. Their exceptional leadership and coordination contributed to the success of the most extensive youth-led protests in Nigeria’s contemporary history. In locating their individual and collective activism, I argue that history provided the roadmap for how they did effective activism since …

Differentially Unwell: On Mimi Khúc's "Dear Elia", Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

[...] Inviting readers to reclaim the stigma of unwellness and collectively to "tend to our unwellness, together," Khúc approaches unwellness as a crucial resource for subverting the "wellness and unwellness" dichotomy entirely. After all, the opposite of "wellness" is not "unwellness"; the opposite of "wellness" does not exist. The opposition itself is an artificial framework, one that reductively harms more than it dialogically helps. We need to move away from these simplistic dualisms, Khúc suggests, and towards more generous, trauma-informed epistemologies. [...]

Playing Changes: Music As Mediator Between Japanese And Black Americans, E Taylor Atkins

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

Since the mid-twentieth century, music has played a central role in encounters and interactions between the people of Japan and those of African descent. It proved far more effective for pro- moting interracial dialogue and understanding than efforts in the early 1900s to foster an alliance against white supremacy and imperialism. This essay unpacks the ways that encounters with Black music transformed Japanese musicking and generated knowledge and empathy for people of African descent among Japanese. Personal interactions between Black and Japanese musicians constituted a process of “grassroots globalization” that circumvented the dominance of American mass media in representing African …

Afro-Latin Americans Living In Spain And Social Death: Moving From The Empirical To The Ontological, Ethan Johnson, Joy González-Güeto, Vanessa Cadena

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper has three objectives. First, we establish that although Spain has attempted to distance itself from its role in the sub-saharan African slave trade and the significance blackness plays within its borders, there exists a significant population of people of African descent from Latin America living in Spain. Second, we show Black people are living what Sadiyah Hartmann refers to as the afterlife of slavery in Latin America. We claim it is worthwhile to take into account that Afro-Latin Americans are fleeing to the country that is largely responsible for them being in Latin America and the conditions of …

A Short Account Of That Part Of Africa Inhabited By The Negroes, Anthony Benezet, Paul Royster , Ed.

Zea E-Books in American Studies

Anthony Benezet scoured the available English literature of colonial exploitation for evidence of the humanity of the trafficked Africans and the inhumanity of the European traders in human beings. He compiled and published this Short Account in 1762 to present the case for termination of the trans-Atlantic transportation of kidnapped Africans, for abolition of slavery and the slave trade, and for emancipation of the enslaved persons held in bondage in North America and elsewhere. Drawing on Scottish moral philosophy, British Whig ideology, and, most importantly, on New Testament gospel teachings, Benezet presented both reasoned and impassioned appeals for the recognition …

Chinese Economic Behavior In Southeast Asia: A Historical And Cultural Overview Of The Migration Patterns, Culture, And Business Practices Of The Chinese Diaspora In Southeast Asia, Zachary Szklarz

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

For hundreds of years, ethnic Chinese have set sail in hopes of peace and economic prosperity in Southeast Asia. Over time, these immigrants became paramount to the culture, economies, and politics of their newfound homes. The immense success of these Chinese migrants and their descendants is based on two main factors: maintaining in-group preference in business and social life without explicit discrimination towards outsiders and holding individuals who have achieved wealth through ethical Confucianist means in high esteem. Unique among diaspora groups, the emigrants from China managed to become fully integrated in their adoptive homelands, while still maintaining traditional customs, …

Educational Attainment: American Indians/Alaska Natives Phenomenological Study Of A Northeast Nebraska Indian Reservation, Stacy Brasch

Dissertations and Theses

This phenomenological study explored the perspectives of American Indian/Alaska Native students who had all graduated from the same Northeast-Nebraska public school located on a federally recognized Indian reservation and completed at least a four-year degree. To that end, the central research question addressed by this dissertation is, “Why were these individuals successful in their educational attainment pursuits when so many of their contemporaries were not?” The two sub-research questions were (1) What supports do American Indian/Alaska Native graduates perceive as having helped to ensure their resilience and successful educational attainment? And (2) What challenges do American Indian/Alaska Native students identify …

Imperial Adolescence In Kenzaburō Ōe's "Prize Stock", D'Yanna Coffey

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The study of adolescents in Postcolonial Studies is a growing area of research. This thesis defines Imperial Adolescence, a critical framework that be used to examine the development of adolescents in imperial settings, applies it to Kenzaburō Ōe’s “Prize Stock,” and encourages postcolonial scholars to add to a steadily discourse. “Prize Stock” tells the story of a black American airman captive in a rural Japanese village, and Imperial Adolescence is applied to the novella’s adolescent narrator. The four stages of Imperial Adolescence (Childhood, Early Adolescence, Puberty, and Middle Adolescence) are used to trace the impact of Postcolonial elements (such as …

Mouralherwaqh Coastal Wetland Road Crossing Da'luk, Natalie Mendez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The integration of Indigenous and Western science plays an essential role in Tribally led collaborations for land management. This process of woven sciences is rooted in reciprocal relations and partnerships guided by Tribal Nations. Our cohort was invited by Wiyot Tribal Representatives to investigate a culvert located within the wetlands of Mouralherwaqh— a parcel of land reacquired by the Wiyot Tribe in 2022. This document seeks to share our experience and analysis as part of the Wiyot Tribe’s broader journey in navigating ecocultural restoration projects within Mouralherwaqh. The four community interests we investigated for the wetland crossing included a resized …

Countering Dominant Narratives In Community: The Many Voices In Spoken Word Poetry, Natalie Raquel Acuña

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In this project I research the counternarratives within spoken word poetry by authors of color (i.e., Rafeef Ziadah, José Olivarez, and Denise Frohman) and how they resist the dominant narratives that are broadcast towards a larger audience. I analyze categories of counterstory through the following paired themes: immigration/citizenship, and joy/trauma. I delve into the heavy importance of community within my project in the realm of spoken word poetry. A lot of poetry is going against dominant narratives, community within this discourse gives a sense of belonging and relatability to the experience of the spoken word performers.

Digital Footprints: Freedom On The Move At The University Of Kentucky, Vanessa Holden, Reinette F. Jones, Jennifer A. Bartlett, Kopana Terry

Library Presentations

During the late 18th through the mid-19th centuries, the Commonwealth of Kentucky saw significant movement of self-emancipated people seeking freedom from bondage. Often referred to as “runaways” or “fugitive slaves,” in historical texts, self-emancipated people defined freedom in many ways. These migrations were widely documented in newspaper advertisements known as fugitive slave advertisements and runaway ads in local newspapers published throughout the state. Access to these materials (often buried in databases or on microform) has been problematic at best. Enter the Self Emancipated and Enslaved People in Kentucky (SEEK) Project, a partnership between faculty in the University of Kentucky Libraries …

Autopathography Across Media: Trauma And Fluid Embodied Subjectivity, He (Kristen) Shen

Honors Theses

Illness memoirs with first-person point of view have gained more attention in recent years among medical sociologists and anthropologists. Different from traditional “case histories”written by doctors that are in danger of ignoring patients’ voices, autopathograhical works delineate narrators’ transformative experiences of persons to patients, emphasizing the importance of gaining social understanding of illness. Focusing on three works within the category of autopathography across genres and media forms in the late 1950s and contemporary periods, The Cancer Journals (1980) written by Audre Lorde, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019) written by Esmé Weijun Wang, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) directed …

Navigating Black Identity: Black Young Adults’ Perception Of Being ‘Black Enough’ In America, Tabitha Omanano

Masters Theses

This thesis highlights young adults’ assumptions that social performance and certain cultural proficiencies validate one’s Blackness. I discuss cultural expressions and differences and social behaviors and why such markers and differences are insufficient to define and authenticate Black identity. I posit that the primary determinant of Blackness is a matter of biology and a shared historical context. I begin by reviewing historical and contemporary perspectives on the racial identity of African Americans and Black Africans across various eras in the United States. This is followed by analyzing the ways in which young people question their Black identities—ethnic, cultural, social, and …

Moonshine Babies, Arghavan Heydareslam

Theses and Dissertations

Moonshine Babies is a two-screen film made of collage/cut-out stop-motion and live-action. It is a visual poem based on my journals from when I recently started living in the US as an outsider. The experience left me feeling divided between the empty present and memories of the past. suggesting that there are collective memories among a group of interconnected individuals that unite them within a single narrative.

There was a moment when I asked, "If you are your memories, what does it mean to be somewhere you have no memories of and no one has memories of you there?"

Memories …

La Voz Winter 2024, El Instituto: Institute Of Latina/O, Caribbean, And Latin American Studies

La Voz

In this issue: 

• Joint Senior Faculty Hire Between the Department of Sociology and El Instituto
• Congratulations to our Colleague Rodolfo Fernandez!
• Building a Better Future: The Latino and Puerto Rican Policy Agenda Summit
• New PRSI Dashboards
• Update on NDOU Department
• CALAHE Annual Conference

Guide To "The Music Of Black America" Radio Script Collection, Columbia College Chicago

CBMR Collection Guides / Finding Aids

The collection contains scripts from “The Music of Black America,” a radio show written and produced in Los Angeles in 1982, hosted by J.J. Johnson (a Los Angeles radio personality) and Grammy Award winning singer Lou Rawls. The program featured a mix of contemporary and historical music, along with interviews. The donor, Albert D. Cunningham, was the show’s principal writer and producer.

Women, Animals, Food: Planetary Perspectives On The Non-(Hu)Man, Samu/Elle Striewski

Comparative Woman

The paper comparatively reads Mahasweta Devi’s Pterodactyl, Pirtha, and Puran Sahay (1995) and Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood (2009) to trace the ways in which both novels show the complex intertwinement of the climate crisis with gender, class, race, subalternity, anthropocentrism, and veganism. Bringing together Gayatri C. Spivak’s notion of “planetarity” with ecofeminist philosophy and literary criticism, the article proposes a planetary ecogender reading of the two texts and their representation of the non-man, non-human, and non-subject. Building up further on Jacques Derrida’s critique of carno-phallogocentrism, the pedagogy of a relational ethics of “nurturing” is hence presented …

Ua12/2/84 Sigma Chi, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Sigma Phi Alpha fraternity and it's forerunner Sigma Chi.

Ua12/2/82 Phi Beta Sigma, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.

Ua12/2/85 Sigma Gamma Rho, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Sigma Gamma Rho sorority.

Ua1c11/127 Stephen Flora Photo Collection, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Photographs donated by WKU alumnus Stephen Flora, taken for class and College Heights Herald.

The Realities Of Adulthood: Insecure's Journey Through Chaos To Fulfillment, Aniyah G. Lathan

Emerging Writers

This article discusses the profound impact of the HBO series "Insecure" (2016) on the lives of young black women, particularly those navigating the complexities of their 20s and early 30s. Through the lens of the awkward yet endearing character Issa Dee, the show portrays a vivid narrative of love, friendship, and career struggles.

Destiny's Cultural And Spiritual Healing: The Practice Of Care And Unlearning In Choreographing, Destiny Rivera-Gomez

Scripps Senior Theses

This research thesis reflects on the choreographic practices of care and unlearning that were implemented in choreographing a piece on personal narratives of immigration, indigeneity, conformity, rejection and celebration of ethnic and cultural pride. The author is a danzante of the Danza Azteca ceremonial practice. She explains the importance of handling the art form with care by learning its history and unlearning the misconstrued histories that have been told about the Mexica and Nahua people who practice the ceremonial danza. Touching on the history of the genocide of the Mexica people who were historically named and referred as the Aztecs. …

Housing Equity In Golden Gate Village, Nicole White

Social Justice | Senior Theses

For generations, the African American community has faced many forms of housing discrimination that have created major inequalities in their everyday lived experiences (Lockwood, 2020). This study explores the long-lasting effects of discriminatory housing policies in creating disparate housing conditions within the public housing community in Marin City called Golden Gate Village, as well as the role of the Marin Housing Authority in practices of displacement and neglect. The methodology for the study included seven different interviews with Golden Gate Village residents to obtain knowledge about the community as well as grasp an understanding of the lived experiences of the …

The Bourgeoisie Black Church: An Analysis Of The American Black Church's Aspirations And Imagination, Alexander Robert Booker

Seattle Pacific Seminary Theses

I am a product of the Black church. It is my home, my heart, and it has helped me spiritually, financially, and emotionally in many ways throughout my life. However, the church that I love dearly and has provided me with many opportunities has also provided spaces of harm, exclusion, and the promotion of an imperialistic Christ. This tension is not a unique tension for many institutions born in America, but what I see so clearly is the tension between the Black church’s countercultural and resistant roots that started in the brush harbors of the antebellum south and into what …

Solidarity Dividend With Us Wool And Community Engagement To Address Socioeconomic Inequities, Helen X. Trejo, Angela Becerril

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

As a long-standing natural fiber, wool provides an opportunity for community engagement and reflexive practice. Our process involved sourcing wool from US sheep and wool farms in lower income areas and hands-on textile development, and intersectional reflection. Being at a Hispanic Serving Institution, informed approaches to engage with concepts, such as the “zerosum paradigm” and “Solidarity Dividend” based on Heather McGhee’s NY Times Best Selling book “The Sum of Us.” It explores how racism affects intergenerational wealth among minorities. The zero-sum paradigm is the idea that progress is a tradeoff; benefits to some is at an expense for others. The …

Describing Dictee, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

The visual images in Dictee are famously captionless. They resist straightforward explanation. In writing image descriptions of the images in Dictee, I have tried to preserve the "captionlessness" of the original. The point here is not to explain the pictures—an image description is not identical to a caption—but to make Dictee more accessible to readers who are blind and visually impaired. I realize, of course, that in trying to make Dictee's captionless images more "legible," I have inevitably "mistranslated" Dictee as it was originally designed to be experienced. Its captionlessness is lost in translation despite my efforts to preserve it. …