Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Criteria For Rejecting Ideas In African Philosophy : A Historical And Epistemological Analysis, Eric C. Mgalula

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

The rejection of African ideas remains a pivotal debate in African philosophy, centring on tensions between universalist epistemologies and culturally specific criteria. This study synthesizes fragmented discussions into a cohesive framework, interrogating when and why African ideas may be deemed inadequate. It critiques contemporary African scholarship that rigidly adheres to indigenous traditions under decolonial and nationalist imperatives, advocating instead for a balanced approach that harmonizes intellectual rigor with cultural authenticity. Through a historical analysis of key thinkers—from Tempels and Hountondji to Wiredu and Oyewumí—this article historicizes the evolution of evaluative criteria in African philosophy, challenging colonial legacies and romanticized traditionalism. …

Mediation Partiality And The East African Community’S ‘Quiet Diplomacy’ In The Kenyan Post-Election Crisis Of 2007/2008, Rasul A. Minja

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

This article examines the role of East African Community (EAC) in mediating the 2007/2008 Kenyan post-election crisis, analysing its engagement in regional conflict resolution. Despite its mandate to promote peace, the EAC's response was constrained by institutional weaknesses, political dynamics, and reliance on quiet diplomacy. The African Union-backed Panel of Eminent African Personalities, led by Kofi Annan, ultimately led the mediation, sidelining the EAC. Through the analysis of primary and secondary sources, the article indicates that EAC lacked a binding conflict management framework and faced decision-making delays that hindered swift intervention. The partiality of key figures, particularly President Yoweri Museveni …

Jonathan M Jackson, Visions For An African Valley: Histories Of Development In Kilombero, Tanzania Since 1877., Emanuel L. Mchome

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

Research on the history of colonial development and future-making in Tanzania has focused on the racial and class politics that influenced development visions and practices. Studies of postcolonial development history have demonstrated how state leaders and their ideologies shaped nation-building trajectories. Notwithstanding of the temporal dynamics, scholars have analysed how the flow of finance and technical assistance reveals intertwined global forces such as nationalism and the Cold War, and how foreign development assistance shaped development in Tanzania. Visions for an African Valley moves beyond this conventional analysis. Instead of employing ideological lenses in analysis, it specifically examines how colonial and …

Beyond Christianity : German Missionaries’ Heritage In Colonial Mbeya, Tanzania, 1880s-1918, Ashura Jackson Ngoya, Edward Simon Mgaya

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

This article examines the history of German missionaries in the colonial Mbeya, a southwest region of Tanzania, from the 1880s to 1918. It explores how missionaries influenced political, social, and economic changes that had a profound impact on the lives of the local population. The article investigates the secular roles of missionaries, which, although they supported evangelisation, they were not directly non- secular aspects. In doing so, the article considers missionaries' efforts in education, health, agriculture, trade, and tax collection, which sometimes led to them working as colonial intermediaries in certain areas of Mbeya. Based on primary and secondary sources, …

Engineering Inefficiencies And Technical Dependency : A Vital Lens In Understanding Power Outages In Postcolonial Tanzania, 1960s-1990s, Emanuel L. Mchome

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

This article examines how the construction of power infrastructure in the 1960s-1980s shaped the future functioning of the Tanzanian power grid from the 1990s. The article is based on oral sources and archival material collected from the Swedish National Archives in Stockholm, the Tanzania National Electric Supply Company Limited (TANESCO), the East Africana Section of the Wilbert Chagula Library at University of Dar es Salaam, the Rufiji Basin Development Authority (RUBADA) and the World Bank online sources. The article argues that engineering inefficiencies of some Western planners and builders of TANESCO’s power grid who failed to consider local ecological issues …

Book Review: Starry Field: A Memoir Of Lost History By Margaret Juhae Lee, Brook Mcclurg

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Without Them, There Is No You: The Role Of Personal Choice And History In Resisting Political Control, Heidi Turner

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

In 2011, Korean-American journalist Suki Kim went undercover as an English teacher at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, working to teach her students while simultaneously recording everything she could about the workings of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). In 2014, her book Without You, There is No Us was published as a memoir, in part due to the inclusion of personal details considered less relevant to the story, thereby undercutting her journalistic credentials.

Here, using C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man as a theoretical framework for understanding oppressive regimes and the ways that they control …

Transpacific Rhizomatic Migration In Kyoung H. Park’S Mina: Settler Desire And Identity Formation In Korean-Latin American Literature In The U.S., Chase Kim

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

The Korean diaspora to the United States is a phenomenon that has long been analyzed for its sociocultural, political, and economic implications. However, generally ignored by scholarship of frameworks such as the transpacific is Korean-Latin American remigration to the United States. Korean migration to Latin America and this group’s subsequent migration to the US was motivated largely by economic factors such as the availability of Latin American agricultural labor in the mid-1960s and the growth of Korean-American professional communities during the 1980s. Situating this migration in a transpacific framework improves our understanding of settler colonial desire and identity formation. I …

Full Circle, Full Century: An Interview With Mitsuye Yamada, Noelle Brada-Williams, Elizabeth J. Asborno

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Volume Thirteen: Teaching In Dangerous Times, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Aaldp Cover Volume 13, Derick Truong

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Tyler Dow, Mark Naison, Stephanie Robinson-Ramirez

Oral Histories

Tyler Dow is an actor, rapper, and activist from the Bronx, interviewed here in conversation with Doctor Mark Naison and Stephanie Robinson Ramirez. A 33 year old from Co-op City—the largest housing development in the United States—Tyler gives his perspective on the art and cultural scene of his neighborhood during the turn of the twenty-first century.

Beginning with the background of his familial ties to Co-op City, Dow explains that the first twenty five years of his life were spent in one of the neighborhood’s many high-rise apartments. He describes Co-op City as a proudly middle-class community, one that residents …

From Fort To Prison: The Production Of Iloilo City, Ram Paulo A. Anayan

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

The foundation of colonial cities in the Philippines rests on violence. The Spanish policies of the reducción forced the natives to settle in pueblos where colonial power is ensured. The resistance of some natives brought about the divide between tagabayan (town dweller) and tagabundok (mountain dweller)—respective connotations of civilization and savagery (Lumbera and Lumbera, 36). This paper examines how this centripetal-centrifugal force of simultaneous identity-production and displacement is echoed in the metonymy of the fort on which the origins of Iloilo City stand. I navigate how this movement manifests in the consciousness of the city across historical periods represented by …

The Path Toward Spiritual Activism: Queer Latinx/A/O College Student (Muxerista) Activism As Sites Of Resistance, Hope, Joy, And Futurity, Roberto C. Orozco, J. Audra Williams

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This study examined collaborators’ engagement in activism as sites of resistance, hope, joy, and futurity. We answer the following research question: In what ways do Muxeristas (Revilla, 2012), or queer Latinx/a/o college student activists, envision and act on kinship and liberation in their activism? We conceptualize our response to this question through Anzaldúa’s (2002, 2015) concept of spiritual activism. Our data analysis articulates three main components of a spiritual activism practice for Muxeristas (Revilla, 2012), which include: 1) engaging in forms of resistance through a queer and feminist world-making, 2) centering joy and love with and for each other as …

Blood Lines, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Blood Lines (2025), directed by Gail Maurice.

Nyc Dj Henry Memorial Event, Jimmy Luckman

Social Justice Week

The Pace community on the New York City campus was invited to celebrate the life and legacy of DJ Henry over dinner. Attendees came together as a community to learn more about the life of DJ Henry, while also engaging in artistic expression to show our resistance and social justice.

"It Is Always Too Late For Truth:" Surveillance And Masculinity In "Wide Sargasso Sea", Kaz S. Schofield

2025 Fall Honors Capstones Projects - Archive

Significant analysis has been done on Jean Rhys’ 1961 novel Wide Sargasso Sea examining gender in relation to the women in the novel, but very little analysis has been conducted on the men. Using the work of Simone Browne, who has theorized how racial categories are maintained through surveillance, I examine how three men in the novel: a white colonist and two mixed race colonial subjects are restricted or otherwise kept docile through their differing masculinity. I argue that it is not only the women in the novel who are oppressed or otherwise disenfranchised by their race and gender, but …

Covid-19 Asian American Oral History Project: Reflecting On Identity And Oral History At A Community College, Thomas Cleary

Publications and Research

In this article, I share narrators’ stories from the Covid-19 Asian American Oral History Project based at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, to illustrate how Covid-19 and increased anti-Asian hate during the pandemic shaped Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) identities in Queens, New York. Narrators’ stories shed light on how Black Lives Matter impacted their own understanding of race and racialization, particularly as AAPI identity and race relate to the Model Minority Myth. This project also laid the groundwork to develop a broader oral history culture at the college, developing faculty pedagogy to incorporate oral history interviews and interviewing into …

Review Of God’S Long Summer: Stories Of Faith And Civil Rights, Jenny N. Liang

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Research Guide To Womanist Literature: Historical, Anticolonial, And Fictional Perspectives, Apoliana Da Conceicao Dos Santos

FIRE Fund Bibliographies

This bibliography was compiled for both research and teaching purposes, organized into three thematic categories reflecting a hemispheric, anticolonial, and womanist approach to knowledge production. The collection centers Black, Afro-Latin American, and feminist voices, offering alternative epistemologies that challenge Eurocentric, patriarchal, and colonial frameworks commonly reproduced in academic syllabi. It invites professors and students across disciplines to engage with scholarship and storytelling that foreground women's histories, theories, and creative expressions.

The first category, Historical Womanist Literature, examines testimonies, resistance, kinship, and survival of Black women under slavery and colonial rule across the Atlantic world, drawing extensively from histories of gendered …

The Case For Racial Literacy, Joni Schwartz

Publications and Research

Racial literacy is widespread in America, and as adult literacy educators our mission is to address illiteracy in all its manifestations. We teach literacies in reading and writing, numeracy, computer, speaking, listening, visual, health, and media, each vital to making sense of our world and functioning effectively in it. Racial literacy is just as vital and should be taught as well. I argue that racial literacy is critical to a meaningful civic and community life. Some scholars believe it is critical to the perseverance of democracy. At the very least, many adult learners do not possess an understanding of what …

Ruthless: The Revolution Of Gangsta Rap, Laci D. Lavoy

Theses

The popularization of gangsta rap in the United States was pivotal to the advancement of Black America following the close of the Civil Rights Movement. The ruthlessness of gangsta rap created a distaste of authority that became a catalyst for Black American unity and change. Artists quickly started writing songs that spoke out against issues plaguing Black and poor Americans, realizing the power of the microphone and the radio. These rappers created an awareness for White audiences that had not been present before and even created a space for White artists with shared experiences. Female rappers took this activism a …

The Day Disco Died, Pearl Johnson

Gateway Reader- Individual Papers

• The Problem: The researcher addresses how Disco Demolition Night, while appearing to be an innocuous expression of changing musical tastes, reflected deeper societal backlashes against marginalized communities—including Black, Latin, and LGBTQ populations—who pioneered and found freedom within the disco genre during a period of civil unrest.

• The Method: The researcher analyzes historical event accounts, photographs, and media reports from the July 12, 1979 event at Comiskey Stadium, incorporating cultural commentary from music critics, social historians, and firsthand testimonies of attendees and staff.

• Quantitative Finding: The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is the highest-selling disco album of all time at 40 million …

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The Varied Response Of Cherokees To Land Allotment, Jacob Cummings

The Ozark Historical Review

This paper analyzes Cherokee opposition to allotment, a United States policy, expressed in the 1887 Dawes Act and other U.S. legislation and executive orders, that coerced tribal nations to break their communally held lands into private holdings, or allotments. This paper argues that the shifting beliefs, political views, and grassroots movements surrounding allotment, and its closely related issues, were both based in and influenced by personal and political interests, as well as from traditional, collective Cherokee values and spirituality.

Failures In Federal Responses To Natural Disasters Along The Mississippi River, Alex Mceachern

The Ozark Historical Review

The author presents an historical view on the plans for and responses to disasters on the lower Mississippi River and the inadequacies of services for African American refugees.

Into The Canebrakes: Arkansas And Naacp's Campaign For A Federal Anti-Lynching Law, Marie Claire Durr

The Ozark Historical Review

Race relations worsened and violence driven by racism increased following World War I. As a result, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or the NAACP, began to scout out cases they could employ in the fight to enshrine federal protections against racial terrorism that were exemplified in Arkansas' 1919 Elaine Massacre and the 1921 lynching of Henry Lowery.

September 30, 2025 Nagpra And Tribal Relations Committee Meeting Minutes, Bryan Morey

University NAGPRA and Tribal Relations Committee

September 30, 2025 minutes for the WKU NAGPRA and Tribal Relations Committee meeting. Meeting conducted via Zoom.

Brad Brewer, Mark Naison, Steven Payne

Oral Histories

Born in Washington, D.C., Brad Brewer moved to New York City as a child when his father joined the New York Police Department. His family first lived in Queens briefly before settling in the Soundview section of the Bronx. After his parents separated, he, his mother, stepfather, and sisters moved to Wakefield, where he spent his teenage years. His maternal family is from Virginia, and his paternal family is from South Carolina. And as a child, he usually visited family in Piney River and Lynchburg, Virginia.

Brewer discovered puppetry at an early age. By the time he was ten years …

Nosagie Ekhator, Mark Naison, Steven Payne

Oral Histories

Growing up in New York City and Pennsylvania, in the city and suburbia, Nosagie Ekhator navigated and rotated between two worlds that shaped his frame of reference. Having built community through this experience, whether it be through the shared memories of moving or Nigerian social clubs and conventions, he was able to create an identity of commonality. Although he felt the differences when shifting through both worlds, he was able to find people that understood his experience, as well as understanding his own individuality through food, music, religion, and being one of the only Africans in his public and private …

Maxine Agee And Kim Mcclain, Mark Naison, Steven Payne

Oral Histories

Kim McClain and Maxine Agee, the second and third presidents of the Bronx chapter of Jack and Jill of America Inc, both have their own experiences with Jack and Jill of America Inc. that is indicative of a vibrant sense of community created by the women alongside those around them. Kim McClain spent a lot of time on her own or with her siblings growing up as she had busy, hardworking parents – her father was the first black firefighter in Queens, New York, with a bold personality and an eclectic music taste ranging from Johnny Cash to Nat King …