African American Studies Commons^™

Cinematic Camouflage, Jared Valdez

English Language and Literature ETDs

There is a war for recognition happening on the Hollywood battlefield. Traditionally, in every war there is an enemy and an alley; in this study, the enemy is systemic racism, and the alley is Black culture. That is, this dissertation seeks to detail the past, present, and future implications of this battle for truth, inclusion, and recognition in American pop culture. This discussion examines how various multi-media forms like literature, film, television, and comic books work as tools to combat racism in American society. More importantly, the theories presented in this text are all linked to actual tactics of military …

More Than The Defiant Few: Lost Womanhood And Necro Women Dismantling Nineteenth-Century Gender Ideologies, Vicki Vanbrocklin

English Language and Literature ETDs

Too many scholars still rely on adjectives such as deviant, unruly, dangerous, and wild to describe women who interrogate rigid forms of womanhood, especially women of color. My project intervenes in nineteenth-century womanhood discussions, which have traditionally solidified three main categories: Republican, True, and New Womanhood. Between True Womanhood in the mid-nineteenth century and the late nineteenth-century concept of New Womanhood lies an overlooked category aptly understood as Lost Womanhood. I focus on newspaper archives, archival research, and imaginative literature to find “lost” women who critiqued a patriarchal system that thrives on women living in a status akin to being …

Ibram X. Kendi's How To Be An Antiracist, Quatez Scott

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

This book review of Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist (2019) addresses the importance of exploring race relations in the U.S. from a framework that focuses on racial policies. Commonly referred to as “systemic racism” and “institutional racism”, racist policies maintain racial inequities. Antiracists aim to eliminate those racial policies. Kendi’s ability to address these issues head on with deeply researched historical narratives brings light to the ways racial policies are reinforced, which reproduce racist ideas. This book drives straight to the heart of racial challenges and takes a new approach at examining how and why humans should …

Kamala Harris And The Complexity Of Racial Identity Politics, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

Vinay Harpalani reviews Kamala Harris' run as Democratic nominee for President, contrasting her challenges with Barak Obama's campaign to show how racial identity politics are complicated and constantly evolving as well as the intersectional, or multifaceted, issues Kamala faced during her candidacy.

Dissonances Of Dispossession: Narrating Colonialism And Slavery In The Expansion Of Capitalism, W. Oliver Baker

English Language and Literature ETDs

This project studies how ethnic American literature of the long nineteenth century represents the relationship between the dispossession of lands and lives—the histories of settler colonialism and slavery—and the making of democracy and capitalism in the United States. We often think of this relationship in terms of temporally distinct stages in which the formal equality of democracy and the marketplace overcome and thus leave behind the direct domination of colonization and enslavement. However, I focus on how the early novels of Indigenous, African, and Mexican American writers from the period of manifest destiny to the New Deal era represent the …

The Justice System Is Criminal, Raven Delfina Otero-Symphony

2020 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Healing Familial And Historical Trauma Through The Lens Of Generational Femininity And Motherhood: Beyoncé'S Lemonade, Amanda R. Garcia

2020 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Racial Condition Of America Through ‘Uncle Tom’S Cabin’, Ellerie Ann Freisinger

2018 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

From Recovery To Discovery: Ethnic American Science Fiction And (Re)Creating The Future, Daoine S. Bachran

English Language and Literature ETDs

My project assesses how science fiction by writers of color challenges the scientific racism embedded in genetics, nuclear development, digital technology, and molecular biology, demonstrating how these fields are deployed disproportionately against people of color. By contextualizing current scientific development with its often overlooked history and exposing the full life cycle of scientific practices and technological changes, ethnic science fiction authors challenge science’s purported objectivity and make room for alternative scientific methods steeped in Indigenous epistemologies. The first chapter argues that genetics is deployed disproportionally against black Americans, from the pseudo-scientific racial classifications of the nineteenth century and earlier through …

Barbara Brown Simmons (Ba 1969, Jd 1974), Unm Black Alumni Chapter Oral History Project

UNM Black Alumni Oral History Collection

Video of interview with Barbara Brown Simmons, who earned her BA from UNM in 1969 and her JD in 1974. She was the first Black woman to graduate from the UNM School of Law, and a cofounder of the UNM Alumni Association Black Alumni Chapter. Interview conducted by Marsha K. Hardeman. Interview runtime is 1 hour, 39 minutes and 2 seconds.

Collection Revitalization At The University Of New Mexico Libraries, Samuel E. Sisneros

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

This article discusses a project that took an early archival manuscript collection that was poorly described and catalogued, and underused and revitalized it (in a sense recovered a lost collection) by re-describing it and digitizing material from the collection for better (new) public access.

Christianity In The Lives Of Highly Educated African American Women, Cecelia J. Travick-Jackson

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This ethnography describes the function of Christianity in the lives of three uncelebrated well-educated African American women. The women are members of academia who hold doctorate degrees. The study gives insight into the function of Christianity in the private and professional lives of the participants. Although their experiences were diverse, the participants were of one accord in understanding Christianity as a coping strategy that provided them with a mechanism to read and interpret the events of their lives.

Womanism is a way of giving name to the lived experiences of African American women. All of the participants shared stories about …