African American Studies Commons^™

A Theoretical Framework For Black Women’S Leader Development, Kayla Kai Parker

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the leader development journeys of Black women, identifying key contributors and inhibitors that influence their progression into and experiences within formal leadership positions. This study employed a grounded theory methodology, integrated with an intersectional framework and Black feminist theory. Study data was gathered utilizing three methods: social media listening data points (n = 216), a leadership roadmap survey (n = 69), and structured interviews (n = 15). The open, axial, and selective coding led to the creation of a theoretical framework outlining two pathways to leadership outcomes: one shaped by inhibitors (e.g., identity management, overcompensation, hindrance, resource …

The Roots Of Womanism As Identity, Empowerment, And Liberation For Black American Women: Raciolinguistic Genealogical Exploration, Shante Noel Millercent Morgan

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Black American women intellectuals, activists, and scholars have grappled with womanism in relation to Black women’s presence in the world, particularly in the context of feminist and Black liberation movements. Since womanism was introduced more than four decades ago, both movements claimed Black women were a priority in theory and rhetoric but often excluded them in practice. For this reason, this dissertation examines womanist thought as a source of identity, empowerment, and liberation for Black American women. I employed two methods to investigate womanist thought that align with a qualitative inquiry: genealogy focus and raciolinguistic genealogy analysis. I conducted a …

Arenas Of Resistance: How Oklahoma's Black Rodeos Preserved Environmental Wisdom And Community Power, Rorie Johnson

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how Black rodeos in Oklahoma emerged from post-emancipation agricultural labor and ranching traditions, serving as powerful sites of cultural preservation, knowledge transmission, and resistance to dominant narratives of the American West. Through analysis of historical records, photographic evidence, and personal family narratives, this research demonstrates how Black Oklahomans developed unique relationships with land and animals that encompassed both the "ecological burden" of agricultural labor and the "beauty" of cultural expression and community-building. Drawing on theoretical frameworks including Kimberly Ruffin's "ecological burden-and-beauty paradox," George Lipsitz's "Black spatial imaginaries," bell hooks' "oppositional gaze," and Toni Morrison's concept of "rememory," …

Marked By Valor: The “Lost” History Of The 6th United States Colored Troops, Heavy Artillery, Daniel William O’Sullivan

CGU Theses & Dissertations

“Marked by Valor: The ‘Lost’ History of the 6 th U.S.C.T., Heavy Artillery,” argues that the camaraderie of having been a Black Union soldier solidified a sub-culture of Black veterans and their families in Natchez, Mississippi, that cohered throughout the Reconstruction period using the tools and the affiliations first gained in slavery and strengthened during the soldiers’ time in the army. Underlying this narrative is an interpretation of Southern history that maintains that we cannot understand the events of the postwar period—not only for Black veterans, but to some extent all freed people—if we do not understand all that came …

Reshaping Black Brilliance: Towards The Development Of A Pan-Afrikan Pedagogy, Amiri Mahnzili

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The academic experience of Afrikan students is constantly perceived through deficit paradigms. Reshaping Black Brilliance is informed by the axiom that the academic experience of Afrikan students should be grounded in the richness and complexities of Afrikan culture, as opposed to the deficit paradigms. This project proposes to reimagine the possibilities of academic success for Afrikan students through an Afrofuturistic methodological approach intended to highlight and bring out the brilliance of Afrikan students. This work seeks to investigate the expansive possibilities of Afrofuturism as a methodology for the production of a Pan-Afrikan pedagogy, examining the power of the imagination through …

From The Inside Out: Excavating The Performing Arts Society Of Los Angeles, Wilfred Joseph Doucet Iii

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This work examines the Performing Arts Society of Los Angeles (PASLA), one of several cultural arts responses to the 1965 Watts Rebellion. Fundamentally, this work seeks to restore to memory and discourse the work of the Performing Arts Society of Los Angeles, its founder Motojicho Vantile Whitfield, and the PASLA Community Players. The Performing Arts Society of Los Angeles demonstrated a dynamic praxis in the South Central Los Angeles community, expressed through the organization’s motto, “social growth through the performing arts.” The Performing Arts Society of Los Angeles offered workshops in the literary, performance and technical aspects of drama and …

Black Lgbtq+ Students’ Perceptions Of Belonging: Resource Centers, Relationships, And Intersectionality On College Campuses, Wesley M. Cox

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation takes a non-traditional approach to qualitative research. Kikimethodology focuses on the lives and perspectives of Black Queer and Transgender college students. This dissertation shows how these collegians navigate identity politics, resource centers, and seek out belonging on their campus. The findings hone in on four broader themes: (a) relationships with peers; (b) relationships with faculty/staff; (c) campus environment; and (d) intersectionality. This dissertation is about Black Queer and Transgender advocacy, knowledge, leadership, life and expression in context with college campuses. The results of this research center on the students’ navigation of campus, agency, family, programming, student leadership, and …

The Influence Of Religion In Frantz Fanon’S Decolonial Theory And Ethics On Violence, Dorival Pimenta Do Nascimento

CGU Theses & Dissertations

How does religious language influence Frantz Fanon’s Decolonial theory and ethics onviolence in the struggle for decolonization and disalienation? This is the question I address in this dissertation carefully observing Patrick Crowley's mention of the presence of religious language in Fanon's work. Crowley’s argument is that Fanon’s thought is apocalyptical in structure and is marked by a dramatic sense of temporality prior to his arrival in Algeria. Crowley develops his article focusing on the messianic question, while the religious language in Fanon's work he ends up relegating to a second plan. In this sense, this dissertation is developed with the …

The High Maintenance Black Girl: Black Female College Students’ Experiences With Intraracial Stereotypes, Alexis Thrower

CGU Theses & Dissertations

While existing literature has extensively documented interracial stereotypes faced by Black individuals, this study delved into the lesser-explored realm of stereotypes emanating from within the Black community itself. This dissertation explored the experiences of Black female college students in predominantly white educational environments, focusing on the pervasive influence of intraracial stereotypes. Grounded in phenomenological inquiry and guided by Black Feminist Critique, the research investigated the impact of these intraracial stereotypes on relationships, sense of belonging, and coping strategies among Black female college students. Four research questions guided this dissertation: What are the intraracial stereotypes experienced by Black female college students? …

Treading Our Path Through The Blood Of The Slaughtered: Race And Martyrdom In America, 1830-1968, Katherine J. Veach

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The United States has a longstanding practice of ascribing the language and imagery of martyrdom to political and cultural figures, resulting in a variegated canon of American martyrs outside the strict bounds of religious tradition. As a contribution to religious studies, American studies and African American studies, this dissertation identifies and examines the language, imagery and trajectory of the strain of American cultural martyrdom I term “Black American martyrdom.” I trace the genealogy of Black American martyrdom from the 1830s, when martyrdom rhetoric flourished among the zealous Northeastern immediate abolitionists, to the 1960s, when Martin Luther King, Jr. influentially cast …

‘Poetry Is Not A Luxury’, Rage Should Not Be A Privilege: The Potential Power Of The ‘Racial Imaginary’, Georgia Mcgovern

CMC Senior Theses

Female rage exists outside of the constructed masculine ideal of anger. To examine female rage, one must analyze the intersections between gender and race. I examine white women's privilege and access to female rage in reality and the fictional world. I explore Black Feminist poetry as a form of storage for rage at gender-based prejudice, racial injustice, and their intersection. Using Myisha Cherry’s term “Lordean Rage”, I recognize this specialized manifestation of female rage as an artistic, intergenerational source of energy for change.

I examine Claudia Rankine’s term “racial imaginary” as an imaginative space in which white people draw lines …

Black Feminist Poiesis: Locating “The Uses Of The Erotic” Within Black Domesticity, Kiandra S. Jimenez

CGU Theses & Dissertations

What does being human mean for women who were artists denied the ability to live life on their own standards? What did it mean to live a creative life when your body was captured and held within a system that surveilled and penalized you for things like writing, reading, or the idea of creating was impossible? In Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens,” she asks us to consider what it meant to be a Black woman artist when you are considered “the mule of the world,” and are stuck toiling away—as a launderer, a maid, a cook, a …

Paul R. Williams At Work In Photographs: Tarrying With Cites/Sights/Sites Of Trouble, Denise M. Johnson

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Ariella Azoulay and W. J. T. Mitchell have called for a new users’ manual for photographs, urging that theory finally wrest itself from the authoritative singular gaze of the patriarchal imperial photographer so that the plurality inherent within the ontology of viewing photographs be engaged. Azoulay cogently argues that the photographer is not the only person to act when a photographic event takes place. By turning critical analysis to the photographic subject and advising viewers to both watch and listen to photographs rather than gaze, a space of appearance is activated in which the photographic subject engages in dialogue with …

African American Women In The Academy: Meaningful Pathways To Productive Careers, Kenya Marshall Harper

CGU Theses & Dissertations

African American female professors hold prominent, influential roles inside and outside university settings. In universities, professors are impactful mentors and role models influencing students' academic dispositions and outcomes (Zinn & Walker, 2018; Hine & Thompson, 1998). In communities, they provide meaningful scholarship that influences academic, workplace, and extracurricular equity and advancement opportunities (Njoku & Patton, 2017; Evans, 2016; Cooper, 2006). The current study investigates the individual aptitude, school/instruction , and environmental factors influencing African American females' life-span academic talent development. A mixed-method research approach, including a structured interview protocol and online survey, is used to investigate study participants' early to …

Jemimas, Jockeys, And Jolly Banks: The Racial Discourse Of Black Collectibles, Conrad Pruitt

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Over the last thirty years, an industry in black racist memorabilia has resurged. Bolstered by online commerce, social media trade, and a robust reproduction market, racist collectibles continue to circulate despite their functional obsolescence or presumed incongruity with current views of race. Many of these objects originated in the late nineteenth century, where the emergence of black citizenship was seen as a threat to a racial caste structure that ensured white supremacy. Following the impetus for supremacy that defined the Jim Crow era, the collectibles sought to crystallize conceptions of inherent black inferiority. The presumption that these originary conditions and …

An Exploratory Analysis Of How Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, And Patrisse Cullors Radicalized The Meaning And Practice Of Self-Care, Melanie Marie Lindsay

CGU Theses & Dissertations

My dissertation, “An Exploratory Analysis of How Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, and Patrisse Cullors Radicalized the Meaning and Practice of Self-Care”, hypothesizes that we can conceive a practice of self-care using an abolitionist lens to examine the writings and performances of three Black feminists Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, and Patrisse Cullors. Abolitionist self-care is a response to the political structures that directly affect marginalized communities, and it evaluates the numerous ways that Black women have used their voice to challenge systems of oppression. If we examine their thinking as expressed through their poetry, their performances (including activism), and their self-life-writing, …

Protest Music In Response To The United States’ Oppressive Political Culture: An Analysis Of Beyoncé'S "Freedom" And Janelle Monáe's "Americans", Jessica Torrey

HMC Senior Theses

This paper aims to study a popular musical artist’s responsibility towards the empowerment of marginalized communities in the United States through an analysis of the songs “Freedom” by Beyoncé and “Americans” by Janelle Monáe. These songs will be analyzed in conjunction with the political climate during the time of their fabrication and release as well as the political climates discussed in the songs themselves. This paper presents a thorough analysis of the lyrical and musical components of both songs as well as an analysis of a specific performance of both songs. These analyses will be presented in conversation with many …

Reimagining The Black Body Through Portraiture: Interpreting The Functional And Societal Roles Of Photography And The Reconstructive Power Of Camera Technology And Photographic Images For African American Self Image, Robert Cain

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis addresses the multiple ways in which the medium of photography, and specifically the portrait photograph, enabled African Americans to visually contest degrading portrayals of blackness and reclaim stolen agency in producing depictions of self throughout the media and popular culture. The societal reverberations of camera technology on the emergence of black photographers like Richard Samuel Roberts, James VanDerZee, and Gordon Parks are analyzed, and the images taken by these artists are read against a history of racist stereotypes, reconsidered for their aesthetic contributions to the art world, and interpreted within the tradition of African American photography. A brief …

Race And Labor In Saint Domingue: "Let Us Die Rather Than Fail To Keep This Vow", Monet Massac

Scripps Senior Theses

My thesis explores the development of racial capitalism in Saint Domingue, today’s Haiti, and how different sectors of colonial society handled and worked with the tools they were given by their oppressors. By “tools,” I mean the ideology of race that devalues and degrades Blackness and gives value to whiteness. Though I am using terms of race, it is impossible to separate racial politics from economics. The scope of my thesis is within the early modern period starting with European and specifically French travel writers from the 1500s on until right after the Haitian Revolution. The investigation is relatively chronological …

America’S Presidential Crisis Of Legitimacy: How The Electoral College Became Obsolete And How We Can Fix It, Julia Rose Foodman

Scripps Senior Theses

The goal of this thesis is to critique the current American Presidential electoral system, the Electoral College, and to show what an alternative could potentially mean for the American people. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What are the main arguments for the Electoral College, why are they troubling, and how can we mend American Presidential elections for the greater purposes of political equality, democracy, and freedom? To do so, core arguments made by conservative pundits in favor of the Electoral College are outlined in order to bring attention to their logical, political, and moral inconsistencies. The inequalities …

Get Out: Schooling As Spirit Possession, Amiri Mahnzili

The Annual Black Intersections Conference

In this chapter, the authors propose that education, which historically has been mainly under the jurisdiction of religious institutions and has been administered by spiritual leaders and attendants, is a sacred and spiritual transaction. Thus, churches and schools are equivalent and have the same spiritual obligation , which is to create in an individual a new spirit. Given the spiritual nature of education, we see the colonial schooling system as a conduit for spirit infusion that provides the opportunity for not only “acting White” but also for the possibility of becoming White by spirit possession. This line of thought leads …

Creole Resistance In Louisiana From Colonization To Black Lives Matter: Activism’S Deep-Rooted Role In Creole Identity, Danae Marie Hart

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Creole identity within Louisiana emerged as a result of French colonization and as a means of classification denoting birthplace but developed into a cultural identity specific to the lived experience of residents of Louisiana. An often-overlooked aspect of Creole identity is its role within the formation of activist networks and resistance within the American South. Resistance is inherent in the formation of Creole identity because it complicates racial politics that are predicated on reductionist singular conceptions of racial and ethnic identity. An understanding of Creole identity as a challenge to the racial binary imposed within Louisiana illuminates the larger legacies …

Visualizing Girlhood: Visibility And The Power Of The Black Girl Gaze To Understand Adolescent Girls’ Identity, Darielle Blevins

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Black feminist scholars have highlighted the various ways Black women and girls are rendered invisible throughout many U.S. institutions. In the past few years, advocates have called attention to the ways gendered-racialized biases contribute to the punitive and dehumanizing treatment of Black girls in school. This study will demonstrate how Black adolescent girls negotiate their identity at school through the creation of self-portraits. By using dual self-portraits, in which girls are able to express their own perspective and imagine the perspective of their teacher, Black adolescent girls are allowed the space to explore the relationship between power, culture and their …

The Noxious Market Of Division 1 College Football, Bryan Carlen

CMC Senior Theses

This paper is made up of four sections. The first will explain Satz’ framework for identifying and treating noxious markets, as well as how it was developed, and the second will make the case for viewing D1 football as a labor market. The second section will lay out who’s involved, what their incentives are, and what they must do to earn these incentives. The third section will then apply Satz’ framework to the market at hand, as well as address a gap in her theory regarding her concept of weak agency. The paper will then conclude with policy guidelines that, …

Black Resistance: Interpretive Agency Enacted Against Mutable Violence, Meera Kolluri

Scripps Senior Theses

Titled Black Resistance: Interpretive Agency Enacted Against Mutable Violence, my research discusses a reformed understanding of racial trauma and autonomy. I elaborate on the common reading of slavery in political thought and defend my argument with modern examples of resistance and theory. This text aims to shine light on assumptive narratives by classifying and redefining mutable violence against black America.

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the intellectual capacity of spoken word and performance poetry, and poets as intellectuals, where poets produce and disseminate knowledge, ideas, and data, in the form of narratives, that contribute to critical consciousness. The effectiveness of the series lay in the consistent blurring of entertainment, knowledge, anti-capitalism, and capitalism. This research demonstrates how Def Poetry Jam provided …

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Sean Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In December of 2001, Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry (Def Poetry Jam) turned HBO viewers into audience members of a televised poetry reading, featuring spoken word and performance poetry. Over six seasons, actors, rappers, comedians, and the host, Mos Def, joined poets in a unique representation of counter-public open mic poetry readings and poetry slams. This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the …

The Homecoming Of The Negro Spirit: Black Spiritual Intelligence As A Structural Form Of Intelligence, Quincy Brown

CMC Senior Theses

In Is Spirituality an Intelligence? Motivation, Cognition, and the concern of Psychology of Ultimate Concern, Robert Emmons develops a case for spirituality as a form of intelligence. His thesis claims that spiritual intelligence is a “set of capacities and abilities that enable people to solve problems and attain goals in their everyday lives”: “the capacity for transcendence; the ability to enter into heightened spiritual states of consciousness; the ability to invest everyday activities, events, and relationships with a sense of the sacred; the ability to utilize spiritual resources to solve problems in living; and the capacity to engage …

Re-Calling The Past: Poetry As Preservation Of Black Female Histories, Rachel Miller-Haughton

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper discusses the poetry of Audre Lorde and Natasha Trethewey, and the ways in which they bring to attention the often-silenced histories of African American females. Through close readings of Lorde’s poems “Call” and “Coal,” and Trethewey’s “Three Photographs,” these histories are brought to the present with the framework of the words “call” and “re-call.” The paper explores the ways in which Lorde creates a new mythology for understanding her identity as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” in her innovative, intersectional feminist poetry. This is used as the framework for understanding modern poets like Trethewey, whose identity as a …

The Socio-Political And Economic Causes Of Natural Disasters, Nicole Southard

CMC Senior Theses

To effectively prevent and mitigate the outbreak of natural disasters is a more pressing issue in the twenty-first century than ever before. The frequency and cost of natural disasters is rising globally, most especially in developing countries where the most severe effects of climate change are felt. However, while climate change is indeed a strong force impacting the severity of contemporary catastrophes, it is not directly responsible for the exorbitant cost of the damage and suffering incurred from natural disasters -- both financially and in terms of human life. Rather, the true root causes of natural disasters lie within the …