Browsing by Subject "Blackness"
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Item Akoben : performance, politics and foundational narratives of Blackness(2015-12) Soares, Maria Andrea dos Santos; Vargas, João Helion Costa; Gordon, Edmund; James, Joy; Jones, Omi Joni; Hale, CharlesThis work investigates Black performances and the performance of Blackness as expression of narratives centered in the fact of existing in this world while a Black being. The themes investigated in this study are ontology, performance, and politics of Blackness deployed by Black Brazilian artists in Rio de Janeiro. In March 2012, several Black artists mobilized to protest against the systematic exclusion of artists and cultural producers of African descent from Brazilian state-sponsored funding opportunities. The Akoben movement—a word that represents the Adinkra symbol meaning “War Horn”—has the goals of Akoben of: to demand transparency from the state in funding decisions, to assure that selection committees will represent Brazilian diversity, and to implement Affirmative Action policies in state-sponsored funding opportunities. Departing from the review of how cultural expressions and art forms associated with African descendants have been used, I will discuss how Akoben brings questions of cultural appropriation and of material and symbolic alienation as effects of racism to the forefront of public debate. I will also discuss the subject of state co-optation of Black activists and the withdrawal of leaders from the social movement to engage within the state or with political parties. In the process of engaging with the state, the Akoben mobilization creates grounds for a racial identity that these artists’ aesthetic creations and activist trajectories feed. Such aesthetic and political processes resist material and symbolic forms of racial subjugation while simultaneously creating a space for exchange and learning, for the establishment of professional networks, and for political action. However, the internal contradictions and limitations, the disputes generated from alignments of Black social movements and of individuals with state institution and political parties, constrain the possibilities of more radical projects of Black liberation either in political, in aesthetic or in ontological terms.Item Black Cowboys and Black Masculinity African American Ranchers, Rodeo Cowboys and Trailriders(2014-12-17) Babers, Myeshia ChanelIn this ethnographic study I use queer theory to consider how black cowboys interact with each other to produce counter or micro-narratives about Black male pathologies and socialization in multiple masculinities. Queer theory provides a model to analyze the socialcultural significance of considering the intersection of race and gender as constructed binaries without focusing on sexuality. The lack of information about Black cowboys from other disciplines creates a peculiar position regarding notions, representations, and understandings about the racially signified cowboys in three ways. First, Black cowboys? relegation to the past leaves contemporary Black cowboys nearly invisible. Second, dominant narratives about notable Black cowboys are written from a particular historical perspective. This perspective suggests that Black cowboys are a ?thing of the past? and extinct figures in American society who were largely absent in the American west except as they proved to possess exceptional ?cowboying? abilities. Finally, Black cowboys? roles and positionality within American history and sport, via rodeo, performs a limited function towards inserting and increasing awareness of alternative representations of (Black) cowboys and their masculinities in the contemporary moment.Item Consuming and performing Black manhood : the Post Hip-Hop Generation and the consumption of popular media and cultural products(2011-12) Williams, Adam Clark; Watkins, S. Craig (Samuel Craig); Moore, Leonard N.Thirty-three young Black men of the Post-Hip Hop Generation (ages 18-25) in Austin, TX, participated in a qualitative study centering on questions investigating Black manhood, media use, and the consumption of popular cultural products. Further, the researcher examined representations of Black men throughout music videos, films, and MySpace profiles. The purpose of this study was to enhance our knowledge about how Black manhood is being defined, conceptualized, and expressed by young Black men, and how significant media and cultural consumption plays a role in their lives. This study probes six questions: RQ1: How do young Black males interpret the images and messages about Black men from mainstream media? RQ2: What types of cultural products are being consumed by young Black men? Why do they consume them? RQ3: How do young Black males define Black manhood? RQ4: Do these cultural products influence the ways that young Black men define/express Black manhood? If so, how? Focus group sessions were conducted throughout the study, which were video recorded and transcribed. Transcriptions were then imported into a qualitative software program known as Atlas.ti, where statements related to the purpose of the study were coded and analyzed. These coded statements were then compared to observations made by the researcher from the examined media representations.Item The dialectic of blackness and full citizenship : a case study of Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic(2016-05) Romain, Jheison Vladimir; Smith, Christen A., 1977-; Arroyo, JossiannaIn 2015 the Dominican Republic enforced a series of measures to expel undocumented Haitian immigrants and unregistered Dominicans of Haitian descent. As a result, thousands of people of Haitian descent became "illegal", deportable subjects forced to either return to Haiti or live in hiding in the Dominican Republic. This thesis presents a theoretical and ethnographic reflection on this most recent citizenship crisis between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Migration carried out despite legal restrictions can be considered a modern form of resistance against racialized and historically defined social structures that disproportionately affect impoverished black people of Haitian descent. How have restrictions on migration and immigration gradually crystallized the lives of black people as less valuable than those of whites and others who fit-in with white, Eurocentric values? During a time in which international migration has gained a great deal of worldwide prominence, the question of citizenship and belonging for people of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic is a window that provides insights into the politics of illegality that have been mobilized to justify the abuse and even the killing of people who have violated established rules of border crossing. Grounded in ethnographic research carried out in the Dominican Republic and Haiti from May to July of 2015, this thesis draws on the work of Sylvia Wynter (2007), Charles W. Mills (1999), and John Rawls (1971) to contemplate the ways in which the social and economic exclusion of black people of Haitian descent has been historically promoted and justified. Further, engaging the theories of Aviva Chomsky (2004), Abdias do Nascimento (1980) and Neil Roberts (2015), the thesis argues that undocumented migration is 21st century marronage – a mode of resistance, through flight, against oppressive socio-economic structures.Item Hearing voices in the dark : deploying Black sonicity as a strategy in dramatic performance(2012-05) McQuirter, Marcus Emil; Jones, Omi Osun Joni L., 1955-; Jones,, Meta DuEwa; Gerald, Stephen; Christian, Pamela; Bonin, PaulDespite the apparent hegemony of vision in racial categorization, historically vocality has borne the brunt of as much racial presumption as physical appearance. This project explores ideas about Blackness, and how the voice in performance engenders conversations on racial authenticity within the United States. Broadly, the work examines how “sounding Black” functions within dramatic performance, and how wider concerns of racial identity adhere to a performer’s vocal choices. The contextualization of racialized sound presented in this project begins with an historical overview of how a “Blackness of tongue” has been framed in U.S. theatrical performance from the early 1800s through the 1960s. It then addresses the dynamics of voice and racial authenticity through two performance case studies: August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro. These cases will be used to explore how issues of racial authenticity thrive in the space between vocal sound production and perception. As case studies based on specific productions of these two plays, text, directorial choices, and the vocal characteristics of the actors themselves occupy equal space at the center of each analysis. At a deeper level, this research seeks an understanding of the cultural assumptions that support the idea of a uniquely Black vocal sound, and what that sound purchases within American societies. In addressing both the phonological and the interpretive qualities of these performances, the central research concerns of this project attempt to pinpoint with more accuracy how voice, fore-grounded in performance, triggers different sets of assumptions that have been commonly identified as a significant component of BlacknessItem Jim and Uncle Remus : stereotypicity versus authenticity in representations of blackness in the Gilded Age(2016-05) Brozovsky, Erica Sharon; Hancock, Ian F.; Hinrichs, LarsAccuracy and authenticity in literary representations of blackness in the modern age are of utmost importance in order to dissuade accusations of racism; however in centuries past, this was not the case. Given the cultural and social climate, what we today see as overt racism may have been viewed in the 1800s as the accepted norm. Actual authenticity was less important than portraying black characters in a way that readers would accept. The purpose of this project is to examine representations of blackness in terms of language and character descriptions in nineteenth century American fiction through the lens of factors that led to the stereotyped versions of black characters that were prevalent at the time. I investigated two works: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings by Joel Chandler Harris, taking into account not only the physical texts themselves, but also each author’s biographic history and personal knowledge and experience of black culture. By examining the phonological, lexical, and grammatical aspects of the Black English found in each text in conjunction with physical, emotional, and intellectual descriptions of the chosen characters, I found archetypes of the Sambo slave stereotype, also influenced by the culture of minstrelsy prevalent at the time. While Twain and Harris claim to have represented their characters as genuinely as possible, external societal pressures and their own limitations as white men clearly affected their depictions of blackness. In the century since these Gilded Age pieces first made their appearance, hundreds of scholarly works on African American speech have been published, reifying the academic study of Black English into a well-established field. Nevertheless its occasional representation in fiction and in entertainment media— especially now film—is evidence that stereotype can still too often win out over accuracy.Item Moroccan modern : race, aesthetics, and identity in a global culture market(2009-08) Rode Schaefer, John Philip; Kapchan, Deborah A. (Deborah Anne); Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-This dissertation asks how conceptions of race have informed popular cultural expressions in post-independence Morocco. Further, how have these expressions helped shape Moroccan modernity? What does an analysis of the history of the Gnawa in Morocco tell us about changes in Moroccan society, including the religious landscape, and the relation of these changes to globalization? This dissertation tracks the often contradictory paths that modernity has taken in Morocco through a focus on one racialized subculture, the Gnawa, ritual musicians originally from sub-Saharan Africa who have lived in Morocco for centuries without losing a certain African identity. The first part of the dissertation assesses Blackness in Morocco, considering Moroccan history in light of its relations across the Sahara desert. I examine cultural patterns of the Niger River region to which the Gnawa trace their origins, as well as crucial elements in the Moroccan past that involve racial formation. The second part of the dissertation considers how newcomers come to take on these new spiritual and musical identities, whether through a kind of musical transposition or an economic conversion. I argue that mass media have been central in Gnawa conversion narratives in the past, while more recent Gnawa identities have revolved around the consumption of commodities. The third section details my own conversion through a series of engagements with the Essaouira Festival of world music and Gnawa music in Morocco. I attended the festival as an informed tourist and also behind the scenes as an interested participant, and I found that the festival serves multiple purposes in Morocco's cultural economy. I conclude that Morocco's aesthetic history is deeply influenced by conceptions of race. These conceptions have in turn influenced commercial media expressions of post-independence Moroccan identities. Finally, since the opening of Moroccan society in the 1990s, the clearest expression of the future of Moroccan expressive and popular culture has been the rise of music festivals.Item Trapped in a generic closet : black-cast television sitcoms and black gay men(2015-05) Martin, Alfred Leonard, Jr.; Beltrán, Mary; Gray, Jonathan A; Perren, Alissa; Pritchard, Eric D; Staiger, Janet; Wilkins, Karin GTrapped in a Generic Closet is an interdisciplinary, mixed methods project that examines the various sites where meaning is made and negotiated with respect to representations of black gay men in black-cast from the mid-late 1990s through the early part of the 21st century. Combining scholarship from TV genre theory, reception theory, authorship studies, critical race theory and queer media studies, this dissertation works toward developing a more holistic understanding of the ways black gayness operates within black-cast sitcoms. This project intervenes and works against the scholarly impetus to study lead and co-starring characters because they have more sustained visibility with viewers and instead examines those one-off (or nearly one-off) black gay male characters within the black sitcom because, I argue, they reveal more about the ways in which ideology function within the genre. It is within the moments of rupture that black gay guest-starring characters emerge that viewers can understand what the show's producers and writers (as a monolithic group) think about gayness and its intersection with comedy. Ultimately, this dissertation project shifts the scholarly attention away from white gay televisuality to black gay televisuality to explore the ways homosexuality functions within the black sitcom and begin correcting the erasure of black queer bodies from the televisual canon of gay representation. Working in tandem with Roderick A. Ferguson, who posits "queer of color analysis extends women of color feminism by investigating how intersecting racial, gender, and sexual practices antagonize and/or conspire with the normative investments of nation-states and capital," this project seeks to extend this critique to the black-cast sitcom and examines the sites where meaning about black gay characters is made.Item Trials of identity : investigating al- Jāḥiẓ and the Zanj in modern pro-Black discourse(2015-08) Ingram, Paige Mandisa; Spellberg, Denise A.; Berry, DainaScholarship about the Muslim philosopher al-Jāḥiẓ and the Zanj revolt of the same era has focused primarily on a specific set of historiographical questions. What was the relationship between al-Jāḥiẓ's explorations of skin color and the revolt of the largely dark-skinned Zanj slaves in Basra, if any? Was the Zanj revolt essentially a class or race rebellion? Such questions, while significant, speak to the specific historical concerns--about the social relations and political-economic systems--of Abbasid-era Baghdad and Basra. Somewhat neglected are the modern uses of this figure and moment in discourses outside the purview of academic study, particularly among politicized Black Americans and Black Muslims, for whom (in some quarters at least) al-Jāḥiẓ and the Zanj revolt hold special import. The rise of Sunni Islam among Black Americans since the 1960s has presented an array of challenges to the unique sociopolitical and religious circumstances in which practitioners are mired. How to develop a religious tradition able to answer to the unique sociopolitical challenges faced by Black Americans, and how to develop simultaneously a religious practice centered on God rather than sociopolitical systems? At the cross-section between politics and religion, Blackness and orthodox Sunni Islam, the answers to these questions have already begun to be attempted, with al-Jāḥiẓ and the Zanj revolt sometimes playing a pivotal role.