Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-186). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 539-569). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

The present study sought to answer the following questions: Is there a correlation between time spent watching rap music videos and and perception of the imagery of women in rap music videos shown? 2) Is there a correlation between the perception of the imagery of women in rap music videos and their attitudes toward women? There were a total of 53 AAFA who participated in the study. The participants completed the Background Questionnaire and Attitude Toward Women Scale for Adolescents (AWSA). They then viewed approximately 10 minutes of rap music videos that portrayed women negatively, and completed the Opinions on Music Videos survey and the General Questions about Rap Music survey. The data were analyzed with two crosstabs matching time spent watching rap music videos per week with feelings about images of women in rap videos shown, and acceptance of images of women in rap videos shown. A t-test was used to compare AWSA scores and acceptance of images of women in rap music videos shown. A one-way ANOVA was used to compare AWSA scores and feelings about women in rap music videos shown. The results of the study suggest that the more time spent watching rap videos, the less likely the participants would accept the negative images of women in these videos as negative and vice versa. No relationship was found between time spent watching rap videos and feelings about the images portrayed. Regardless of the participant's AWSA score, it did not correlate with her perceptions of the images of women in rap music videos shown. Implications for research and practice were then discussed. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

This thesis focuses on the continuous misrepresentations that appear throughout different outlets of popular culture and the negative impacts of these misrepresentations. In the first chapter, the focus will be on the films The Last of the Mohicans and The Mission and the origins and implications of the misrepresentation of Indians in film. The second chapter uses rap music videos such as 50 Cent’s In Da Club, Nelly’s Tip Drill, LMFAO and Lil John’s Shots, Where Da Hood At, Tupac’s Hit ‘Em up, and N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton as primary texts to demonstrate the one dimensional and problematic representations of African American Identity in the rap music industry. The third and final chapter uses the video games Grand Theft Auto III and Gun as examples of the negative representations that occur and are repeated quickly in the rapidly improving world of video games. While the misrepresentations are achieved and perpetuated differently in each medium, their ubiquitous presence in popular culture calls for discussion. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This transformative mixed-methods research study, uniquely designed as a 12-week curriculum to facilitate critical media literacy, drew upon the principles of critical pedagogy to investigate Black adolescents ‘perceptions of the impact of media on their racial identities. Responding to the high rate of media consumption among Black youth, the Critical Encounters Unit engaged 79 Black high school students in the southeast United States in examining how they made sense of their media encounters. Data on participants ‘perceptions of the role media plays in constructing Black identities and societal perceptions of Blacks were gathered through pre-post study surveys of all participants‘ self-identities and media literacy, interviews with 15 participants, 467 student journals, and 15 video observation field notes. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015 / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis is concerned with popular music's working of time. It takes the experience of time as crucial to the negotiation of social, political or, more simply, existential, conditions. The key example analysed is the funk style invented by legendary musician James Brown. I argue that James Brown's funk might be understood as an apprehension of a minor temporality or the musical expression of a particular form of negotiation of time by a minor culture. Precursors to this idea are found in the literature of the stream of consciousness style and, more significantly for this thesis, in the work of philosopher Gilles Deleuze on the cinema in his books Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image. These examples are all concerned with the indeterminate unfolding of lived time and where the reality of temporal indeterminacy will take precedence over the more linear conventions of traditional narrative. Deleuze???s Cinema books account for such a shift in emphasis from the narrative depiction of movement through time the movement-image to a more direct experience of the temporal the time-image, and I will trace a similar shift in the history of popular music. For Deleuze, the change in the relation of images to time is catalysed by the intolerable events of World War II. In this thesis, the evolution of funk will be seen to reflect the existential change experienced by a generation of African-Americans in the wake of the civil-rights movement. The funk groove associated with the music of James Brown is discussed as an aesthetic strategy that responds to the existential conditions that grew out of the often perceived failure of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Funk provided an aesthetic strategy that allowed for the constitution of a minor temporality, involving a series of temporal negotiations that eschew more hegemonic, common sense, compositions of time and space. This has implications for the understanding of much of the popular music that has followed funk. I argue that the understanding of the emergence of funk, and of the contemporary electronic dance music styles which followed, would be enhanced by taking this ontological consideration of the experiential time of minorities into account. I will argue that funk and the electronic dance musics that followed might be seen as articulations of minority expression, where the time-image style of their musical compositions reflect the post-soul eschewing of a narratively driven, common sense view of historical time.

This thesis is concerned with popular music's working of time. It takes the experience of time as crucial to the negotiation of social, political or, more simply, existential, conditions. The key example analysed is the funk style invented by legendary musician James Brown. I argue that James Brown's funk might be understood as an apprehension of a minor temporality or the musical expression of a particular form of negotiation of time by a minor culture. Precursors to this idea are found in the literature of the stream of consciousness style and, more significantly for this thesis, in the work of philosopher Gilles Deleuze on the cinema in his books Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image. These examples are all concerned with the indeterminate unfolding of lived time and where the reality of temporal indeterminacy will take precedence over the more linear conventions of traditional narrative. Deleuze???s Cinema books account for such a shift in emphasis from the narrative depiction of movement through time the movement-image to a more direct experience of the temporal the time-image, and I will trace a similar shift in the history of popular music. For Deleuze, the change in the relation of images to time is catalysed by the intolerable events of World War II. In this thesis, the evolution of funk will be seen to reflect the existential change experienced by a generation of African-Americans in the wake of the civil-rights movement. The funk groove associated with the music of James Brown is discussed as an aesthetic strategy that responds to the existential conditions that grew out of the often perceived failure of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Funk provided an aesthetic strategy that allowed for the constitution of a minor temporality, involving a series of temporal negotiations that eschew more hegemonic, common sense, compositions of time and space. This has implications for the understanding of much of the popular music that has followed funk. I argue that the understanding of the emergence of funk, and of the contemporary electronic dance music styles which followed, would be enhanced by taking this ontological consideration of the experiential time of minorities into account. I will argue that funk and the electronic dance musics that followed might be seen as articulations of minority expression, where the time-image style of their musical compositions reflect the post-soul eschewing of a narratively driven, common sense view of historical time.

This Project involves looking at African American culture as it relates to swimming, water safety awareness, and water skills. The paper explores the myths and cultural norms associated with drowning phobias in African Americans to discover the root causes. Through historic accounts of African American culture one begins to uncover reasons why this culture became, in a sense aqua phobic. The paper will show what water sport professionals are up against, when working with a culture that is several generations removed from the water and their water skills. The ultimate goal is to draw attention to the importance of water safety and the ability to swim as a life skill. / by Jon Eric Groover. / Vita. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.