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- All Subjects: Black Studies
- Creators: Anderson, Lisa
Description
The purpose of my dissertation project is to understand how Same-Gender Loving (SGL) Black Christian men negotiate their sexuality and spirituality in spaces that are not always accepting of SGL people, by examining on how Black SGL men perform their sexual identities within hegemonic institutions that often deny their existence or outwardly seek to exclude them from their communities. I have identified three scripts that Black SGL men often follow within Black religious settings. The first script that SGL people often follow in the church is that of deliverance-- confessing their same-gender desires and maintaining that they have been delivered from those desires The second is "don't ask don't tell" performed by men who many believe and suspect of being SGL; so long as they do not publicly affirm these beliefs they are able to hold a variety of positions in their religious communities.. The last script involves accepting one's same-gender desires and also affirming one's Christian beliefs, proclaiming that the two are not at odds with one another. I examine how these scripts and/or others are performed by and on the bodies of Black SGL males in two distinct sites. The first is the career and music of former gospel star Anthony Charles Williams II (Tonex / B. Slade), who has utilized the three scripts at various times in his career. The next site is that of theatre, where I explore how these scripts have been employed in dramatic texts. By reading Christian Black SGL performance through its theological parameters, I aim to discern the avenues in which Black people in the United States are able to perform same-gender sexual identities in spaces that are constructed as "homophobic," and in so doing combat the narrative of hyper-homophobia in Black communities.
ContributorsChester, Tabitha Jamie Mary (Author) / Anderson, Lisa (Thesis advisor) / Leong, Karen J (Committee member) / Honegger, Gitta (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This thesis closely reads black gay pornography and NeoSoul music from the 1990s to theorize the digital transformations of the adult entertainment and music industries during the commercialization and boom of the Internet. Acknowledging black sex workers and musical artists as knowers and agitators whose labor and artistry teased and troubled these transformations, I employ an American Studies analytic to archives and genres that highlights the economic and historical undergirding of black sexual economies in the United States. I argue that black musical artists and sex workers facilitate a mapping of black sexual economies and an ecosystem of labor and pleasure upended by the commercialization of the Internet that pronounces a dialogic relationship between the adult entertainment and music industries, black musical artists and sex workers, and black musical and pornographic genres. Through close reading and nut chasing methods, I intimately describe the musical and sexual performances of sex workers and musical artists in three pornographic films and one music video to analyze the complexities of instrumentation and cinematography during this technological era, how they narrativize sound and place, and the sensorial and physiological effects of witnessing and listening to these performances. In this project, I ask: how does porn and music remember sound and place, how does black music and black gay pornography narrate black sexual economies and geographies, and how did the commercialization of the Internet in the 1980 and 90s change black musical genres and (black) gay pornography?
ContributorsAnderson, K (Author) / Bailey, Marlon M (Thesis advisor) / Roane, JT (Committee member) / Anderson, Lisa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Critiques of mass incarceration and its far-reaching effects have become a growing field of study in academia, drawing attention to the inequities and injustices created by prisons and the systems of white supremacy and patriarchy underlying the carceral logics of the prison. Prisons, as a form of social control, are not only to police and regulate individual bodies and spirits, but entire communities. While people of color are locked into systems of incarceration, their families (spouses, partners, parents, and children) are also caught up with the financial and emotional burdens of incarceration. This dissertation focuses on a population I call Mainline Mamas: Black women with relationship to prisons—through visitation or incarceration—while engaging with family, children, partners, and other women. Drawing on autoethnography and interviews with seven women who have navigated prisons as visitors, and some as incarcerated persons, this dissertation, therefore, interrogates how Black women are forced into a relationship with prisons, through incarceration and/or visitation, define, practice, and experience mothering. Our stories show how Mainline Mamas form communities as they navigate the entrenched hierarchies of the prison industrial complex. Mainline Mama, as a population, practice, and theory, is therefore a reimagining of possibility from the margins; a particular form of precarity that also searches for joy, family, and connection in the midst of a carceral state violence.
ContributorsHarris, Keeonna (Author) / Quan, H.L.T. (Thesis advisor) / James, Stanlie (Committee member) / Cheng, Wendy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021