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Full-Text Articles in African American Studies

Voices Of The Say Her Name Campaign: Theorizing An Activist Rhetoric Of Blame, Alisa Davis May 2021

Voices Of The Say Her Name Campaign: Theorizing An Activist Rhetoric Of Blame, Alisa Davis

Theses and Dissertations

There is a lack of research in communication scholarship that analyzes how Black women employ blame from their unique standpoint. To combat this, this thesis analyzes the Say Her Name Campaign to demonstrate the ways Black women employ an activist rhetoric of blame that deconstructs their historical erasure in the discourse about antiblack police violence. Drawing upon Black feminist scholarship and epideictic rhetoric, I argue that an activist rhetoric of blame, used by Black women, dramatically puts on display the life of individuals who have experienced injustices and exposes blameworthy misogynoir attitudes in order to criticize the inherent flaws within …


Maternal Healthcare Experiences Of African American Women In Milwaukee : A Relational Dialectics Perspective, Comfort Tosin Adebayo Aug 2020

Maternal Healthcare Experiences Of African American Women In Milwaukee : A Relational Dialectics Perspective, Comfort Tosin Adebayo

Theses and Dissertations

Black women are experiencing pregnancy-related complications at a significantly higher rate than women of other races in the U.S., as Black women are three to four times likely to die from pregnancy-related complications compared to non-Hispanic White women (CDC, 2019a). I applied relational dialectics theory (Baxter, 2011), a critical communication theory, to examine dominant and marginalized discourses that are present in women’s talk about maternal care. I conducted interviews with 31 African American women living in Milwaukee county, Wisconsin. Women narrated their pregnancy stories, noting how they constructed meaning through the interactions they had with healthcare providers. Through a contrapuntal …


Containing Fatness: Bodies, Motherhood, And Civic Identity In Contemporary U.S. Culture, Ruth J. Beerman May 2015

Containing Fatness: Bodies, Motherhood, And Civic Identity In Contemporary U.S. Culture, Ruth J. Beerman

Theses and Dissertations

The body, and visualizations of the body, serve as a way read appropriate consumption and citizenship: Weight operates as a key way to see literal consumption. U.S. citizenship is now commonly understood as consumptive bodily citizenship, where one's body, or one's child's body, communicates their civic standing. Drawing on three case studies concerning childhood obesity, this dissertation demonstrates how rhetorics of and about the fat body construct the public identity of good citizen and good mother.


Race, Crime And Athletes: A Qualitative Analysis Of Framing In Local Newspaper Coverage Of Nfl Quarterbacks Michael Vick And Ben Roethlisberger, Kristi Grim May 2013

Race, Crime And Athletes: A Qualitative Analysis Of Framing In Local Newspaper Coverage Of Nfl Quarterbacks Michael Vick And Ben Roethlisberger, Kristi Grim

Theses and Dissertations

The present study researched the positive, negative, thematic and episodic framing contained in local newspaper coverage of two criminal investigations of National Football League quarterbacks: the Ben Roethlisberger rape case and the Michael Vick dog-fighting case. A qualitative analysis revealed stories about Roethlisberger were more likely to feature positive framing supporting the message that Roethlisberger was a good person who was innocent of criminal activity. By contrast, Vick articles were more likely to feature negative framing supporting the message that Vick was a criminal. In addition, articles on Roethlisberger were more likely to use thematic frames as a way to …