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This study explores creative expression as a form and function of activism, self-determination, self-actualization, community transformation, and cultural resilience/survival. Initiating this probe into the vast topic, the study begins with the following set of research questions: What is the highest responsibility of African artists? Is it to the work of art itself—to pursue an object perceived as an island of form and symbol with little or no reference to other life experiences that lends itself to urgent, relevant social interpretation; is it to identify and promote one’s self as an individual seeking self-glorification and or commendation, to prove humanity and/or worthiness to others, or to intensify the advancement toward the total liberation of all African people? This decidedly theoretical endeavor primarily concerns itself with African creative expressions (literary creations, cultural performance, visual and musical expressions) within the constructed boundaries of the United States of America that included not only a historical overview of the earliest extant Black cultural creations, but also an evaluation of the socio-historical and political context in which African artists—with distinctive attention on musicians and visual artists—flourished within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including those contemporary artists who continue to thrive in the twenty-first century. Among other issues, this treatise specifically ponders relative to the moral and ethical obligation of African artists’ is the challenge African creatives face in making political and creative expressions synonymous. / African American Studies

This dissertation analyzes and broadens the discourse regarding the impact of culture and the emergence of the social movement by focusing on some of the links between culture and social movements. Drawing upon the idea of cycle of protests this work explains how African Americans were able to materialize, communicate, and ultimately sustain separate identities under antagonistic social conditions. Critical to the understanding of this work is the role the "free space" had in shaping the identity of both African Americans and the movement which occurred as a result of their attitudes. The free space can be described as a protected area, haven, or a small-scale setting which provides activist autonomy from dominant groups where they can nurture oppositional movement identities. This study is a multifaceted account of the Black Greek-letter organizations that explains the creation of these organizations within the Black community. There are four steps or levels which were examined in order to understand the rise or the establishment of the Black organization as a means of social protest. They are: 1) mediating factors or social grievances within a community, 2) the creation of the cultural free space, 3) the framing of the organization in relation to other social movements, 4) the personal orientation or cultural affiliation (African agency) of the organizations' members. Subsequently, this study analyzed how internal conflicts, hostile social and political environments, the creation of new organizations, and the dissemination of community grievances combine to create an atmosphere which allowed the African American community to create its own separate conscious identity. By dissecting the anatomy of the social movement and the interrelated patterns that define them one will be able to recognize and ultimately predict the rise of future social movements. / African American Studies

This research investigates the role of Afrocentric consciousness within African Aesthetics as it relates to liberation for African American communities, more specifically young black millennials. “Welsh-Asante’s Nzuri Model of Aesthetics” is utilized as a theoretical guide to evaluate Hip-Hop artist’s Afrocentric location or lack thereof. Kendrick Lamar’s album titled “To Pimp a Butterfly” is closely examined in this thesis for its lyricism, aesthetics shown in cover illustration, and music production. This close analysis of “To Pimp a Butterfly” serves as an archetype or manifestation of Welsh-Asante’s “Nzuri” model in Hip Hop form. This thesis analyzes “To Pimp a Butterfly” to assert the notion of spirituality as the key component to black liberation. Other Hip-Hop artists such as Kanye West, NWA, Tupac Shakur, and DMX are critiqued and measured for its Afrocentric location; determining whether the artistic production of these artists upholds an Afrocentric consciousness. Ultimately, this thesis argues that in order for African art to liberate African (American) communities, the art must have spirituality at the center of its artistic production. Because Afrocentricity is used to place African culture, values, and ideologies at the center of its own reality, an Afrocentric consciousness can be used as a tool to evoke a conscious transformation that aids in decolonizing European thought. Ultimately, this research adds to the conversation of Hip Hop music as an art that can be spiritually healing in its process of awakening one’s African consciousness in the wake of cognitive hiatus. / African American Studies

Properly understood, Africana Studies is a stand-alone "discipline." One that goes beyond, and disengages the normative boundaries and understandings of Western disciplinarity. This work is premised on such an understanding of autonomy. It reifies such a proposition by compiling scholarly literature on the subject of Africana intellectual traditions as a point of departure for articulating a rationale for viewing Africana Studies' disciplinary history as inclusive of the expansive tradition of Africana intellectual thought. It posits several generations of thinkers associated broadly with what can be referred to as Africana Studies have determined that African intellectual traditions should influence and often provide the methodological direction for disciplinary Africana Studies. It assembles much of the literature that attempts to contextualize disciplinarity firstly, and then those that theorize connections of Africana Studies disciplinary work to intellectual traditions arising out of the African experience. Through a process of culling the intellectual commitments of Western structures of knowledge from general intellectual historical texts and other disciplinary histories, this work situates its development of communities of thought and their academic and ideological legacies. From there it assesses how Africana thinkers understood these knowledge formations, a process Cedric Robinson considers to be the beginnings of a Black intelligentsia. The combination of all these reviewed literatures will be analyzed to reveal why and how, if at all, Africana thinkers have developed work that contributes to the construction of its own disciplinary space--with its concomitant methodological considerations. / African American Studies

The aim of this critical interpretive work is to demonstrate the leadership, guidance, and guardianship of Harriet Tubman as factual productions of historical memory as a soldier, Underground Railroad conductor, organization founder, and Women’s rights campaigner. Thus, this study is a meta-interpretation and historical narrative account based on a montage of common facts about Tubman’s life as re-examined in an Africological frame. By surveying the historical and social data related to Tubman’s life this work lays the ground for an authentic account of the role Harriet Tubman played as an agent, in the Afrocentric sense, as she carried forward her self-given obligations to liberate her people. Using many of the commonly known experiences of Tubman’s life I applied cosmological, epistemological, aesthetics, and axiological canons to reveal the critical core of an interpretive memorial narrative of Tubman as a social movement leader. / Africology and African American Studies

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the extent to which Miles Davis’s recordings Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, and Doo-Bop were 1) reflective of a Black aesthetic, 2) reflective of Davis’s resistance to a Eurocentric aesthetic, and 3) reflective of tenets of Afrofuturism. This study also critiqued literature related to jazz historiography from the music’s earlier formation to assess the extent to which that literature was written from an Afrocentric or Eurocentric perspective. The methodology for this study utilized the Afrocentric paradigm to examine and analyze data from structured interviews, archived interviews, archival data such as album cover liner notes, and album cover artwork. Findings supported my hypotheses that recordings were reflective of a Black aesthetic and reflective of tenets of Afrofuturism, but did not support my hypothesis that Davis was resisting a Eurocentric aesthetic. Instead, findings indicated that Davis was unconcerned with a Eurocentric aesthetic and was only concerned with creating his own aesthetic. Implications of this study consists of educators, historiographers, and music critics constructing an Afrocentric narrative of jazz historiography that places Black people at the center of analysis as active agents rather than passive spectators. The result will yield a historiography that corrects a historically Eurocentric narrative that marginalized Black musicians’ role in jazz history. Another key implication of this study is to demonstrate the importance of oral history projects where the stories of Black people are told from their perspective, which is critically needed. / Africology and African American Studies

Due to lack of research, the nuanced experiences of Black women training in the discipline of ballet, have been overlooked. As a result of lacking academic examination, the disorientation of Black women has continued at the hands of foundational and cultural principles found in Eurocentric ballet. This research is a qualitative study of scholarship paired with auto-ethnography to highlight the mental and physical damage Eurocentric ballet has caused Black women. The presented scholarship employed an afrocentric approach in an effort to accurately articulate and validate the experiences of Black ballerinas. / Africology and African American Studies

<p> The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate the perceptions of African American farmers&rsquo; regarding the use of organic farming as a viable business model to prevent land loss. The exploratory case study design was used to explore the perceptions and opinions of 13 African American participants regarding their experiences farming. Interviews, field notes, and observations were used to collect the data, and the data were analyzed to identify themes. The study results indicate that discriminatory practices, little access to government aid, and ineffective business models are reasons for land loss. The findings also show that organic farming is a sustainable solution that African American farmers can use to impede land loss. Based on the study results, leaders in the African American farming community are encouraged to adequately address the issues of the organic farming in the African American community, including discrimination, lack of knowledge about organic practices, and infrastructure issues. The results of this study can be used as the basis for quantitative research that involves gathering information from a wider range of African American organic farmers. Research could also be conducted to investigate whether farmers of other ethnicities have faced the phenomenon explored in the current study.</p>