African American Studies | Open Access Articles

The Hybridizing Nature Of Ancestor Presence In Morrison’S Sula, Mounica V. Kota Ms.

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

In her writings, Toni Morrison works towards a common goal of establishing a black literary canon, once that represents black characters as autonomous and nuanced human beings unable to be boxed into a one-dimensional narrative. Part of this overarching project appears to be creating a hybridizing narrative in which the cultural roots of various African-American communities are integrated with the social movements of the modern diaspora. One common theme between her novels is the inclusion of a specific ancestral figure, one that functions as some kind of pushing point or learning tool for the community within the story. In examining …

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A List Of Racialized Black Dolls: 1850-1940, Anthony F. Martin

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

Between 1850 and 1940 Black racialized dolls made in Europe and the northern United States saturated the marketplace with the peak years in the 1920s. These dolls were advertised with pejorative names and descriptions that typed cast African Americans as domestics and labors on mythical antebellum landscapes assisted White children in shaping Black people as inferior to Whites. Data mining doll encyclopedias, websites, and catalogs, I have compiled a list of Black racialized dolls. Additionally, I have provided advertisements of positive imagine Black dolls from The Crisis and The Negro World that provided a counterweight to the stereotyped dolls.

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Terracotta Pipes With Triangular Engravings, Flavia Zorzi, Daniel G. Schávelzon

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

The discovery of two smoking pipes from seventeenth-century contexts in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is used to suggest the presence in colonial times of a new set of stylistic norms derived from African traditions that are expressed at a regional scale not only in smoking pipes, but in a variety of items of material culture. These terracotta pipes, recovered at Bolívar 373 and the Liniers House sites, are characterized by their particular geometric decorative pattern, achieved by engravings and incisions. Similar specimens were found elsewhere in Buenos Aires, as well as in Cayastá (province of Santa Fe, Argentina) and Brazil.

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