African American Studies Commons^™

Clinical Considerations For Black Student Athlete Development, Jahnia Margarita Green

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Black student athletes exemplify the complexity of navigating intersecting identities at pivotal points in their development. They are also more likely to make premature commitments to their athletic identity and in turn suffer from psychological distress during times of transition (Beamon, 2012). The focus on Black collegiate athletes is informed by persistent mental health challenges associated with higher levels of competition or transitions (e.g., injury or retirement) within collegiate athletics (Brewer & Petitpas, 2017; Menke & Germany, 2019). This paper aims to develop culturally informed clinical considerations through the analysis of the Black student athlete experience and structural aspects of …

Defying Impossibility: Critical Qualitative Reorientations To Black Lgbtqia+ Sense Of Belonging, Olivia H. Hunte

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Belonging is a human need central to survival and can be cultivated within all spheres of life. Social environments are vital for experiencing a sense of belonging. In some social environments, Black LGBTQIA+ people encounter greater impediments to their daily lives with consequences for survival, including threatening their belonging needs. Within the United States, systems of oppression create and inform conditions within social environments that can potentially thwart pathways to belonging for Black LGBTQIA+ people. Thus, fulfillment of belonging needs for Black LGBTQIA+ people is one of nuance, pain, resilience, hope, harm, trauma, resistance, and healing; scant research is available …

Frameworks For Repatriation: Moving Beyond Nagpra, Ashley Joplin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Museums and similar federally funded educational institutions have been collecting human remains since the Enlightenment era in the 1800s. Since then, these institutions have developed various collections practices that have encouraged the collection of human remains. Often unethical in nature, these collections have harmed historically marginalized communities, such as Indigenous and African American communities. While the ethics of collecting have been under scrutiny for decades, it was not until 1990 under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) that mainstream attention was drawn to the ethics of collections practices.

This thesis explores these collections practices and the repatriation …

Examining Barriers To Crisis Service Use Among Black Young Adults, Emily K. Burns

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Black communities face an increased burden of mental illness (Gordon, 2020). This can be linked to factors such as experiences of racism, higher rates of unemployment, financial and food insecurity, and disparities in health care (Gordon, 2020). Despite this, Black communities have historically experienced relatively low rates of suicide (Gordon, 2020). This has been anecdotally attributed to protective cultural values and beliefs about suicide. However, there has been a recent shift in this trend, particularly for Black youth and young adults.

Beyond The Benefit: A Multi-Modal Narrative Study Of Black Women's Experiences With Employer-Sponsored Tuition Assistance, Britany Patricia Hamilton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the lived experiences of Black women engaging with employer-sponsored tuition assistance programs, focusing on how social, structural, and identity-based factors shape their educational and professional trajectories. While these benefits are often framed as neutral tools for career advancement, this study examines them through the intersecting lenses of race, gender, and labor, revealing deeper dynamics of access, value, and belonging. Guided by a qualitative narrative inquiry approach, this study employed a multi-modal data collection design involving video diaries, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group. Three participants, all Black women between the ages of 30 and 40, shared their …

Who Gets To Be A Child And When? The Pervasive Yet Contextually Shaped Nature Of Racialized Adultification Across Perceivers And Contexts, Kevin M. Summers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Racialized adultification is a pervasive bias in which individuals tend to judge Black children as older and more adult-like than White children of the same age. This racial bias is discussed across many scientific domains in addition to popular media, yet there is relatively little empirical work documenting its existence, consequences, and boundary conditions. In the current work, I aim to develop an empirical foundation that advances scientific understanding of racialized adultification and in turn contributes to a growing model that elucidates the conditions under which individuals are disproportionately likely to express this pernicious bias. In the current work, I …

Harlem’S Avenues For Agency: An Exploration Of Black Female Agency In Angelina Weld Grimké And Zora Neale Hurston’S Short Stories, Jessica Ellen Hartenbower

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores themes of Black female agency in selected short stories by Angelina Weld Grimké and Zora Neale Hurston. Pushing back against the belief that the Harlem Renaissaince was a movement solely for male artists, Grimké and Hurston write short stories that center Black women and their experiences. Through the avenues of bodily autonomy, the using or silencing of voice, the opportunity and ability to make choices, issues of justice, retribution, and vengeance, the holding of authority, and being empowered or disempowered, I examine the female characters’ exercising of their agency to varying degrees. I also discuss how religious …

Exploring The Effects Of Africana Studies On Black Undergraduate Students: A Qualitative Case Study, Lanaya M. Butler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Particularly in the context of American K-12 schools, education has been manipulated to control—rather than liberate—students through the erasure and distortion of Black history, experiences, perspectives, and capabilities. Additionally, American schools prioritize memorization and obedience while failing to equip students with critical thinking skills. As a result, students are trained to become workers rather than innovators, worldbuilders, and change-makers. For nearly a century, Black educational critics have stated that these systems were designed to subjugate Black community members through dehumanization and enslavement of the mind. These critiques are foundational to the aims of Afrocentric education which posits the life experiences …

Is She Being “Fast?”: Exploration Of African American Women’S Experience With Sexual Objectification, Alaigra V.R. Usher

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Issues of sexual objectification have been intertwined in America’s history since enslavement. This phenomenology study aimed to explore African American women’s lived experiences with sexual objectification and to understand the essential themes and conceptualizations that African American women attribute to sexual objectification. Through semi-structured interviews with a criterion sampling of African American women, the research sought to identify core themes surrounding sexual objectification experiences. In the results of this study, it was found that this population conceptualizes their sexual objectification experiences through seven themes: Earliest Sexual Objectification Experiences (SOE), SOE, Responses to SOE, Parental Protection, Reasons for SOE, SOE places, …

The Intersection Of Consensual Non-Monogamy, Black Identity, And Power Dynamics: A Review And Proposal For Therapeutic Models, Casey Nelson

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Consensual non-monogamy (CNM) and polyamory are types of relationship structures that differ in many ways from monogamy. CNM is becoming more prevalent (Moors, 2023; Scoats & Campbell, 2022). In the United States and Canada, 1 in 5 people have engaged in some form of CNM (Moors, 2023). As more individuals engage in CNM relationships and potentially seek out couples therapy, therapists will be tasked with assisting individuals navigating relationship distress occurring within these unique relationship structures. There is limited research, or empirically validated, treatment models for working with couples with intersecting identities. To date, there has yet to be an …

Paycheck-To-Paycheck: How Public Service Loan Forgiveness Inhibits Generational Wealth Attainment For Black Women, Ashley Patrice-Rose Sherman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Black women who attend college in the United States are more likely to borrow to cover the cost of attendance and carry the largest amount of student loan debt than any other racial and gender group. Federal student loan borrowers are encouraged to work in public service to take advantage of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF), an income-driven repayment program established by the College Cost Reduction and Access Act (CCRAA) of 2007. PSLF offers total debt relief after ten years of uninterrupted full monthly payments based on an income-driven repayment plan. The significance of this qualitative study will …

Culturally Responsive Coaching: Supervision With A Cultural Lens, Jouanna Crossland-Wells

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Culturally Responsive Practices (CRP) are a focal point for many districts across the country. The emphasis of CRP is on how the institution enacts policies and practices for the benefit of the students they serve. This study views CRP from a different lens. The focus of this study is to 1.) center the voice of Black teachers and 2.) explore culturally responsive practices for the support and edification of the teacher from their coach/supervisor. The eight Black teacher participants and their instructional coaches engaged in interviews discussing current coaching models and the dynamics of their coaching relationships.

The relevant findings …

The Role Of Care Practices, Mutual Aid, And Racial Formation In Black Newcomer Practitioners’ Lived Experience Within Organizations: A Critical Qualitative Inquiry, Annie Zean Dunbar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Black newcomers, defined as people who have migrated to the United States regardless of legal status, are one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups. (Morgan-Trostle et al., 2016). Within this population, a small percentage work within the social service sector with other migrants. Using critical qualitative methods, a critical phenomenological methodology and semi-structured interviews, a sample of 17 participants were asked about their experiences of living and working in the U.S. social service sector. The study uses racial formation theory (Omi & Winant, 2014) to conceptualize how participants experienced their racial identity formation and how racism shapes their personal and professional …

Childhood Discipline Disparities For African American And Latinx Students, Cierra Townsend

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

African American and Latinx students are disproportionality impacted by punitive discipline models including suspensions, detention, and expulsions. This disproportionality removes students from the education setting creating adverse social emotional, academic, and economic outcomes. Students who are suspended and expelled are more likely to have contact with the juvenile justice system and or to be pushed out of school into alternative settings. Therefore, punitive discipline leads to increased school-based pathways to the juvenile justice system (SPJJ), also known as the school the prison pipeline (STPP). Despite knowledge of these adverse outcomes, schools continue to utilize punitive discipline practices. School psychologists are …

Suicidality Among Black Women: Considering Resiliency Within The Historic And Societal Context Of Risk, Samantha J. North

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Suicide is a global health challenge that has been historically understudied among Black women. The interpersonal-psychological theory of suicidality (IPTS) is a primary theory examined in suicidality; however, the three factors within the theory (lack of belongingness, perceived burdensomeness, and capability to die) focus on the individual. The purpose of the current study was to examine these factors in an expanded context of the historical and societal impact of oppression. A mixed methods Qualtrics study was administered to Black women who voluntarily completed the survey anonymously. Quantitatively, the study found significant differences between the impact of the IPTS factors on …

Seeking Sisterhood: An Exploratory Qualitative Inquiry Into The Sorority Rejection Experiences Of Black Women, Jasmine Michelle Pulce

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In response to a call to fill the gap left by previous studies on collegiate sorority rejection, this study explored the meaning Black women ascribe to experiences of rejection from historically Black sororities. Using Black feminist thought and sista circle methodology, this study introduced narratives from five Black women who came together to comprise a collective standpoint. To better understand this phenomenon, study participants completed individual interviews, two Sista Circles, and one reflection survey. Three main findings were the interconnectedness of Black Greek-letter organizations and Black subcommunities at predominantly white institutions, the nonlinear nature of the Black sorority rejection experience, …

The Struggle Is Real: Constructing Liberative Meaning Making That Facilitates Black Student’S Authentic Identity Formation And Navigation Through Predominately White Institutions, Felicia Marie George

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on how Black students’ use of navigational capital reflects a quest for complex subjectivity that facilitates authentic identity formation and navigation through a private, predominantly white, four-year, R1 institution (PWI’s). A qualitative study that used portraiture methodology was conducted to collect stories of the lived experience and perceptions of two Black senior undergraduate students who attended a PWI. Their stories provided the foundation for constructing liberative meaning making (LMM), an ethic of praxis that uses a hermeneutics of listening to heighten students’ awareness of and living from interiority. The concept engages De La Torre’s theory of liberative …

Du Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, Caitlyn Aldersea, Justin Bravo, Sam Allen, Anna Block, Connor Block, Emma Buechler, Maria De Los Angeles Bustillos, Arianna Carlson, William Christensen, Olivia Kachulis, Noah Craver, Kate Dillon, Muskan Fatima, Angel Fernandes, Emma Finch, Colleen Cassidy, Amy Fishman, Andrea Francis, Stacia Fritz, Simran Gill, Emma Gries, Rylie Hansen, Shannon Powers, Jacqueline Martinez, Zachary Harker, Ashley Hasty, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Kathleen Hopps, Adelaide Kerenick, Colin Kleckner, Ci Koehring, Elijah Kruger, Braden Krumholz, Maddie Leake, Lyneé Alves, Seraphina Loukas, Yatzari Lozano Vazquez, Haley Maki, Emily Martinez, Sierra Mckinney, Audrey Mitchell, Kipling Newman, Audrey Ng, Megan Lucyshyn, Andrew Nguyen, Stevie Ostman, Casandra Pearson, Alexandra Penney, Julia Gielczynski, Tyler Ball, Anna Rini, Christina Rorres, Simon Ruland, Helayna Schafer, Emma Sellers, Sarah Schuller, Claire Shaver, Kevin Summers, Isabella Shaw, Madison Sinar, Claudia Pena, Apshara Siwakoti, Carter Sorensen, Madi Sousa, Anna Sparling, Alexandra Revier, Brandon Thierry, Dylan Tyree, Maggie Williams, Lauren Wols

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

DU Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Works

An Exodus Of Black Excellence: Black School Leaders And Their Search For Home, Nickolas H. B. Dawkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the racialized experiences of Black public-school principals who have served in and prematurely exited the school principal position. By implementing a phenomenological and qualitative approach this study seeks to understand the lived experiences of Black school principals that have resigned from an educational organization and/or principal position in American public schools. The study examines historical factors that contribute to Black school principals leaving educational spaces and utilizes online surveys, multiple rounds of one-on-one interviews, and coding to analyze and identify forces at play in the racialized experiences of Black school principals who exit their positions. Findings suggest …

Regardless, ‘I’ And ‘You’: Lessons From Black Feminist Literature, Jasmine Veronica Sauceda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple from a Black feminist perspective to demonstrate oneness as capacious being. This project explores an I-You dialogue that works toward future-making through the notion of regardless, an idea from Walker’s definition of Womanist, deployed through sustained engagement with Kevin Quashie’s notion of oneness. Thus, this work extrapolates lessons found in the selected texts to demonstrate what it means to embody a capaciousness of being and how this then fosters healing in the face of trauma. In so doing, …

“Damned If Ya Do, Damned If Ya Don’T”: A Critical Narrative Inquiry Exploring The Gendered Racism Experienced By Black Women Housing Professionals In Higher Education, Shaniquè Jazmine Broom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Between 1999 and 2018, there was an 11% decrease in Black women staff and administrators at post-secondary institutions. This study utilized Black Feminist Thought and Sista Circle Methodology to uncover how Black women reflected on experiences of and coped with gendered racism at PWIs. Participants offered reflections on their relationships with Black women and men, white men and women, and students. Black women shared their reflections with discrimination and a deceptive institutional culture. Black women also discussed utilizing several coping strategies such as hyper-awareness, hypervigilance, enacting personal and professional boundaries, avoiding hypervisibility and engaging in personal and familial connections with …

"Stay Strong": Internalized Stigma, Religiosity And Black Mental Health In Colorado, Breigh Jones-Coplin

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

While the societal stigma on mental illness deters people from seeking mental health services, there is limited research on how Black personality and cultural practices may impact stigma and Black mental health (NAMI, 2020). In an attempt to identify protective and risk factors for internalized stigma and Black mental health, the present study examined 416 Black adults in Colorado and identified significant relationships between African Self-Consciousness, internalized stigma of mental illness, religiosity, and mental health functioning. Results showed that having a strong African-centered identity and religious grounding are associated with less internalized stigma and difficulty in functioning and mental health …

Rape: A Settler-Colonial And Anti-Black Project, Cristy A. Dougherty

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

White feminist theorizations of rape privilege patriarchy as the main source of gender violence, ultimately centering white cisgender women. In doing so, white women are treated as subject in anti-rape discourse while the violence inflicted on women of color is rendered as secondary and insignificant. Conversely, Indigenous and Black feminist analytics center Indigenous and Black women’s experiences with sexual violence, ultimately pointing to the ways in which rape has been used as a tool to perpetuate heteropatriarchy, settler-colonialism, and anti- Black racism. For instance, Deer (2015) explains that Indigenous women experience disproportionately high rates of sexual violence that spans generations. …

Adding A Dimension: Illustrating Triple Consciousness Theory In The African American Literary Tradition, Asia Wesley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the way gender expands and nuances W.E.B. DuBois’s double consciousness theory, which depicts the African American identity as a doubleness that is both American and Negro. Black feminist criticism’s nuanced formulation of DuBois’s formulation of Black identity allows the African American literary tradition to be seen through three lenses: an American, a Negro, and an African American’s gender identity. In order to further contemporize the pre-existing Black feminist criticism, I examine Hurston, Brooks, and Morrison in the three time periods that followed DuBois’s coining of double consciousness theory: (1) the Harlem Renaissance, (2) the Civil Rights Movement …

The Revival Of Scott Joplin’S Treemonisha In A Black Feminist Context, Alec Larner

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Freed Faces, Our Past Americans: Collaborations To Create, Digitize And Describe The “Former Slaves In Freedom” Collection, Gayle Porter

Collaborative Librarianship

The Chicago State University (CSU) Archives collaborated with the International Society of Sons and Daughters of Slave Ancestry (ISDSA), a Chicago-based lineage society, to digitize, describe, and make accessible online a collection of 359 private historic photographs of formerly enslaved African Americans, and 90+ brief family histories, submitted by descendants. This case study describes the benefits, processes, and challenges of this unique, unfinished collaborative project. The study also describes: 1. Creative, flexible approaches to collaborative digital projects by an academic institution and a community organization; 2. Balancing cataloging/metadata standards while respecting a curator’s goals for the collection.

Brokering Access, Belief And Opportunities: A Phenomenology Of Black Principals’ Leadership Through A Racialized Lens, Natalie Denise Lewis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The educational landscape of the twenty-first century currently faces several significant challenges, including widening academic opportunity gaps. These gaps suggest that there is need to examine the perspectives of leaders in the role of principals more deeply. However, as leadership theories continue to develop, there has been limited research conducted on the impact of principals’ racialized experiences and their approach to leadership. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to center race by exploring the essence of Black principals’ understanding of their racialized experiences and its meaning to their leadership and school communities. Findings indicate that Black principals’ (a) understanding …

Black Minds Matter: A Phenomenological Inquiry Examining The Prevalence Of Racial Trauma Among Black Doctoral Students, Jazmyne Markeeva Peters

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Systemic and institutionalized racism is endemic to life in the United States and contributes to the daily marginalization of Black people. While the negative psychological and physiological effects of racism have been well-documented, the notion that racism can be experienced as a trauma is a newer theory. Racial trauma has been understudied and underappreciated, though it is a theory that clinicians should incorporate when working with Black clients and other clients of color. Exploring the ways in which Black doctoral students attending a predominantly White institution (PWI) have experienced racism is an essential contribution to the existing racial trauma literature. …

“Dialogical Offense:” A Postcolonial Womanist Deconstruction Of The Colonial Experience Of African American Women Through U.S. Institutional Apparatus Known As Criminal Justice Policy, April Michelle Woodson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Black female experience in the United States is a colonized existence. This project’s analysis is specific to the North American U.S. geographic space and is not a diasporic project. Black women suffered from the greatest increase in the percentage of inmates incarcerated for drug offenses in the 1980’s and 1990’s which is the period of criminal justice policy formation and implementation on which this project is focused.

This project is uniquely situated in the overlap between womanist ethics and postcolonial feminist imagination and extends scholarship in both discourses by showing that there is an interwoven line between the colonial-to-contemporary …

A Black Feminist Quare Interrogation Of Stud Misogyny In Black Queer Web Series, Taisha Mcmickens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this Black feminist-quare study is to analyze the relationship between misogyny and queer masculinity performed by “studs” in Black queer web series located on YouTube.com: Women of Atlanta TV, New York Girls TV, Choiices The Series, and The Best Friend. Studs are masculine-identified Black lesbians. Stud misogyny is tethered to histories of the patriarchal gaze on Black women’s bodies. This gaze exposes stud and femme queers to layers of violence challenging us to rethink masculinities outside of the colonial imagination. I employ a Black Feminist Quare theoretical framework to attend to stud’s embodied experiences, challenge …