Matching Items (11)
Description
"Hip Hop Narrative" is a creative project that interviews 20 undergraduate Arizona State University students, ranging in races, ages, grades, majors, and hometowns. The project is comprised of two elements: profiles plus headshots of each student, along with a video compilation. The profile interview questions were meant to uncover why undergraduate Arizona State University students listen to hip hop; more specifically, what they listen for in a beat, if they notice the lyrics, and if hip hop affects their lifestyle. For the video portion of the creative project, each student was asked to write what hip hop means to them in one word on a whiteboard and hold this word up; the goal of this activity was to challenge each student to concisely summarize a subject they frequently enjoy. Seven out of 20 respondents used the word "expression" to describe hip hop in one word. This project also exhibited interviewee's personality through responses and content. Although the interview questions stayed the same, each student responded differently. The profiles captured the essence, passion, and rawness behind the student's opinions of hip hop. The interviewed ranged from five to 20 minutes, with each one sharing a unique perspective of how hip hop has impacted them personally. This project did not have a hypothesis prior to execution. However, once the project was completed, five observations of general consensus were made about language, gender, the use of the N-word, beats, and lifestyle. Respondents did not find that hip hop language offended them enough to stop listening to the genre. Both female and male respondents were not offended by gender roles in hip hop. There were mixed opinions regarding the use of the N-word in hip hop songs. Hip hop did affect the way student's behave, dress, and talk, with the exception of a few students.
ContributorsKurtz, Arianna (Author) / Fedock, Rachel (Thesis director) / Delmont, Matthew (Committee member) / School of Public Affairs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
The lack of diversity for minorities and especially women of color is astounding in the film industry. Film is supposed to imitate life, but that can't happen successfully unless more stories are told about different kinds of people. The following thesis focuses on the diversity struggle, specifically for black women by analyzing Hollywood films and critiquing the structure of the film industry. I chose to focus on films made in Hollywood because they are extremely ubiquitous, meaning they can reach many different people from around the world. Hollywood films set the tone and build impressions in other countries about what certain types of people look and act like and the stereotypes associated with these films reach millions of minorities as well. Essentially, solving the diversity problem will make a larger impact not only in America, but around the world. The four chapters of this thesis focus on the history of blacks in film, representation of black women, black women behind the screen, and improvement for the future of the industry.
ContributorsCook, Sydni Nicole (Author) / Gruber, Diane (Thesis director) / St. Clair, Charles (Committee member) / Gray, Kishonna (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
How do Queer Black Women make sense of their experiences within educational settings? How do they engage in space-making? How do educational settings protect Black Queer Women's bodies? Through a series of in-depth interviews with individuals that identify as, are labeled by others as, or previously identified as Queer Black Women, I found that participants understood their lived experiences intersectionality and understood their experiences in educational settings as critical to their self-development. Participants described race, sexuality, and gender as overlapping systems of oppression that negatively affected their experiences within educational settings. Not only did participants experience discrimination due to their race or gender, but also due to their sexuality. This seen and/or invisible identity leads them to experience multiple axes of oppression, not only inflicted by peers and teachers, but also the institutions. The findings have implications for theories of intersectionality and queer of color critique.
ContributorsMelendez-Mayfield, Amina (Author) / Charron-Chenier, Raphael (Thesis advisor) / Lopez, Vera (Committee member) / Garcia, Rocio (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
In this study, the primary researcher set out to analyze the success of Black STEM students at a PWI. Focusing on the specific details that affect success the most, such as a differing sense of belonging, racism and race-based stressors, parental education level, and access to a parent in a STEM field.
ContributorsTillman, Arianna (Author) / Wilson, Jeffrey (Thesis director) / Hassan, Kenja (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor)
Created2022-12
Description
Black LGBTQ people living in Des Moines, Iowa face challenges living at the intersection of Blackness and LGBTQ status. Critical race theory helps situate the context for understanding the lived experiences of Black LGBTQ individuals within broader systems, exposing the impact of societal expectations on identity formation and resources available to community members. Four interviewees shared their ideals and areas of opportunity that exist to strengthen resources available to Black LGBTQ people living in Iowa. This research study used an action research methodology paired with counternarrative analysis to guide the interview process. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes within and across participant interviews. Each of the interviews was edited into a podcast episode for the researcher’s ‘Porch Tea w/Destinee’ podcast. The overarching themes that emerged from the podcast were that (1) navigating Blackness within Iowa communities is a challenge and (2) community learning is essential to understanding identities and lived experiences.
ContributorsWoodris, Destinee (Author) / Gee, Elisabeth (Thesis advisor) / Zinnel, Daniel (Committee member) / Wolf, Leigh (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
"Black in Bleu" is a reflection on my life as a young, Black woman in America told through poetry, and music in conjunction with feminist activists' work as well as results from a survey amongst other young, black students. This paper is a window into Blackness reflecting my experiences as well as many others in a way to find love in that reflection. There is a playlist that goes along with the paper meant to be listened to simultaneously with the reading.
ContributorsDowning, Ciarra (Author) / Acierto, Alejandro (Thesis director) / Reyes, Ernesto (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Black queer women and nonbinary people (BQWNB) living with mental distress are an important sub-group in the Black community in need of greater attention in mental health research. However, the majority of health research about the Black community focuses on Black cisgender men who have sex with men and people who have or are at risk of having HIV/AIDS. To expand the knowledge about BQWNB, I applied critical and transformative approaches to understand mental distress. Using a Black queer feminist mental health framework and transformative healing justice lens, this phenomenological qualitative study set out to explore and describe how BQWNB living with mental distress navigated their mental health and wellbeing with a sample of 17 participants. Data were collected using one-on-one audio-recorded semi-structured interviews. There were three major findings that emerged from participants’ narratives: (1) contributors to mental distress, (2) impacts of mental distress, and (3) positive responses to mental distress. Contributors to mental distress included individual and collective trauma experiences, embodying strength and independence, and experiencing stereotypes about their sexual and multiracial identities. The impact of mental distress resulted in lowered quality of life and reported self-harmful thoughts and behaviors. Finally, positive responses to mental distress included body, mind, and spirit and community-centered responses as well as resistance to cultural norms and expectations and non-disclosure as a form of self-preservation. These findings led to an integrative (not) being-in-distress framework and a new critical approach to mental health and healing that informed anti-oppressive social work research, practice, and education.
ContributorsThomas, DeShay (Author) / Holley, Lynn C (Thesis advisor) / Jackson, Kelly F (Committee member) / Mendoza, Natasha (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Small fires in Black American women’s literature have been briefly and disconnectedly studied by numerous scholars. No scholar thus far, however, has aggregated the multitudinous symbolic presentations of small fire in Black American women’s literature. This thesis performs a literary criticism of several texts written by several Black American female authors, all of which contain deliberate uses of small fire. The conclusive product is a revelation of the way small fire functions within Black American women’s literature to imitate the cycle of the legendary phoenix—birth, flight, self-combustion, and rebirth—and to catalyze the multi-generational uplift that exists for Black American women who indefatigably create personal, domestic, and community renewal, and who undauntedly combat systems of racial, sexual, economic, and patriarchal oppression.
ContributorsBrooks, Jeremy David (Author) / Brown, Lois (Thesis advisor) / Clarke, Deborah (Committee member) / Free, Melissa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Black Americans and Black folks across the globe continue to proclaim variousunfreedoms we experience specifically due to our Blackness. As we struggle against and
survive through the unfair structures, ways of being, and conditions that are killing us, we
have been creating new survival strategies for living. One of our primary arguments is
that state entities and the anti-Black carcerality embedded in them (e.g., policing, prisons,
hospitals, welfare systems, military, the foster care system educational institutions etc.)
are the primary arbitrators weaponizing violence, injustice, and unfreedom in our lives.
Since the Black Lives Matter uprising in 2013 due to the murder of Trayvon Martin,
leading up to the largest global uprising in 2020 due to the murder of George Floyd, and
the ongoing activism around anti-Black police violence, we who are organizers and
activists have found ourselves seeking out alternative ways to be principled in our
struggles for abolition, transformative justice, and Black liberation. A part of being in
principled struggle is building a praxis (when theory meets practice) of how to conduct
oneself in community with others, and with the state in a way that is aligned with stated
values and beliefs. Much of the organizing work geared towards eradicating anti-Black
violence pulls from the theoretical and practiced interventions of the Black radical
tradition, Black feminist thought, and abolitionism(s) to inform their praxis. This
dissertation will seek out a Black radical queer feminist praxis by conducting an auto-
ethnography using critical art-based Black feminist-womanist storytelling to measure
data collected from my lived experiences as an organizer and activist to uplift the
liberation strategies of an era.
ContributorsAraya, Miriam (Author) / Anderson, Lisa (Thesis advisor) / Duarte, Marisa (Committee member) / Alhassan, Shamara (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
The primary aim of this dissertation is to make a substantial contribution to the better understanding of the identity formations of Black Caribbean migrant women in Britain. The dissertation outlines a theory of Black female subject formation in Britain. This theory proposes that the process of subject formation in these women is an interrupted one. It further suggests that interruptions are likely to occur at four crucial points in the development of their identities. These four points are: 1) the immigrant identity; 2) the Caribbean identity; 3) “the Jamaican” identity; and 4) the Black British identity.
In order to understand the racial and gendered dynamics of identity formation in these women, I hypothesized that the structure of institutional racism in Britain has taken the form of a “double wall” or a “double portcullis”, which much be scaled by these “immigrants”. My research, based on interviews with 15 Black professional women who identify with a Caribbean ancestry, confirmed very strongly the existence of this double portcullis. It further supported the hypothesis that the above points of identity transition were also points of possible interruption. My research also revealed that through a variety of social movements, cultural and political mobilizations, it has been possible to get over the negative stereotypes of the immigrant identity, the Caribbean identity, “the Jamaican” identity and to succeed getting over the first or the Black British wall of the double portcullis. For me, the most interesting findings of my research, are the continuing difficulties that the women I interviewed have faced in attempting to climb over the second portcullis to achieve the Black English identity. The dissertation concludes with some suggestions about the future of this “unfinished” Black British identity and its prospects for easier access to the Black English identity, and thus to “life success”.
In order to understand the racial and gendered dynamics of identity formation in these women, I hypothesized that the structure of institutional racism in Britain has taken the form of a “double wall” or a “double portcullis”, which much be scaled by these “immigrants”. My research, based on interviews with 15 Black professional women who identify with a Caribbean ancestry, confirmed very strongly the existence of this double portcullis. It further supported the hypothesis that the above points of identity transition were also points of possible interruption. My research also revealed that through a variety of social movements, cultural and political mobilizations, it has been possible to get over the negative stereotypes of the immigrant identity, the Caribbean identity, “the Jamaican” identity and to succeed getting over the first or the Black British wall of the double portcullis. For me, the most interesting findings of my research, are the continuing difficulties that the women I interviewed have faced in attempting to climb over the second portcullis to achieve the Black English identity. The dissertation concludes with some suggestions about the future of this “unfinished” Black British identity and its prospects for easier access to the Black English identity, and thus to “life success”.
ContributorsJohn, Anique (Author) / Swadener, Elizabeth B (Thesis advisor) / Henry, Paget (Thesis advisor) / Hinds, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019