<p> Octavia Butler asked if black skin was so disruptive a force that the mere presence of it alters a story? In a post-colonial era, skin color remains a polarizing topic. While humans are still redefining perceptions about race, people across planet earth are opening up to the possibility of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. This paper explores how the acknowledgment of a galactic presence would transform perceptions of whiteness. The experiences of the best-selling author and proclaimed contactee, Whitley Strieber, are used as case studies to analyze if Amero-European ingrained bias toward melanin would influence the western world&rsquo;s interactions with dark-skinned extraterrestrials species. The white male is portrayed as the prototypical sci-fi nerd in popular American culture; however, the themes and struggles present in science fiction remain deeply connected with those present in African American culture. Despite the presence of extraterrestrials in African centered tradition, Stieber's experience demonstrates that whiteness still holds influence on the dominant cultural position regarding alien contact. I will practice Sankofa to trace African centered histories and traditions designed for communicating with entities from different dimensions, realities or even planets that continue to perpetuate in African American culture. I argue that African American culture has been addressing aspects of reality unacknowledged by the western world. I demonstrate that elements of the cosmic, supernatural, extraterrestrial or superhuman continue to manifest in African centered culture. These continually dismissed observations get lost in a world where the European Enlightenment has led to a culture in which whiteness establishes itself as &ldquo;a norm that represents an authoritative, delimited and hierarchical mode of thought&rdquo; as Joe Kinechole notes, limiting Amero-European culture from fully embracing a world view that includes extraterrestrials. Whiteness changes as it interacts in a range of settings and this paper examines the role of whiteness in a galactic environment by exploring how whiteness navigates through alien spaces.</p><p>

<p> This dissertation focuses on the artwork of J.B. Murray, an African American artist from Mitchell, Georgia. The goal of this dissertation is to explore J.B. Murray&rsquo;s production of protective scripts and spirit figures. Murray created art works that served as the conduit for spiritual healing or protection between his God, his ancestral energies and the recipients or viewers of his work. </p><p> Protection through writing is both an Islamic and indigenous African tradition. Art Historians, after seeing Murray&rsquo;s work, called it masterful art. It is my contention that Murray possessed knowledge that, unbeknownst to him or his ancestors, was passed along to him by his African ancestors. This knowledge is also seen in the work of other African and African American artists in this dissertation, which shows continuity across a wider group as opposed to just one artist. </p><p> Finally, a parallel is draw with African protector and healer, Serigne Bousso, from Touba, Senegal. Murray&rsquo;s experience of visions and protective and healing work parallels the experience of Serigne Bousso within the last 30 years. This parallel is significant in making the connection between Murray, in Georgia, and the possible West African source for his knowledge of visions and protective signs.</p>

<p> This integrated literature review compiles past and present literature on the African Holocaust or Maafa to provide a more in-depth understanding of the unique sociopolitical narrative of the enslavement and oppression of Africans and African Americans for half a millennium in the United States. This study integrates historical data, theoretical literature, and clinical research to assess immediate and sequential impacts of the traumatization of the African Holocaust on enslaved and liberated Africans, African Americans, and their descendants. This investigation engages literature on trauma (Root, 1992), historical traumas (Duran, Duran, Brave Heart, &amp; Yellow Horse-Davis, 1998), historical unresolved grief (Brave Heart &amp; DeBruyn, 1998), and multigenerational trauma transmission (Danieli, 1998) to explore claims of slavery and relentless oppression leaving a psychological and behavioral legacy behind to the contemporary African American community (Abdullah, Kali, &amp; Sheppard, 1995; Akbar, 1996; Leary, 2001, 2005; Poussaint &amp; Alexander, 2000; B. L. Richardson &amp; Wade, 1999). By and large, this study provides a comprehensive exploration and critical examination of Leary&rsquo;s (2005) Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome theory (PTSS), which suggests that the traumatization of slavery and continued oppression (i.e., racism, discrimination, and marginalization) endured by enslaved Africans in the United States and their descendants over successive centuries has brought about a psychological and behavioral syndrome prevalent amongst 21st century African Americans. Findings from the critical analysis revealed that in addition to inheriting legacies of trauma from their enslaved and oppressed African ancestors, contemporary African Americans may have also inherited legacies of healing that have manifested as survival, strength, spirituality, perseverance, vitality, dynamism, and resiliency. Clinical implications from this research underscored the importance of not pathologizing present generations of African Americans for their attempts to cope with and adapt to perpetually oppressive environmental circumstances. Further quantitative and qualitative research that directly tests the applicability of PTSS within the African American community is needed to better grasp the representational generalizability of PTSS. Lastly, rather than focus on the repeated victimization of African Americans, the findings from this study suggest that future research should focus on the mental sickness of African Americans' oppressors in addition to identifying and delineating intergenerational legacies of survival, resilience, transcendence, and healing birthed out of the historical trauma of slavery.</p>

This dissertation undertakes a comparative analysis of the musical, written, and spoken production of Sun Ra and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti with respect to the larger African Atlantic intellectual environment, situating the two artists as both shapers of an Atlantic intellectual culture as well as artists who were, in turn, shaped by that culture. Through a reading of their creative work, the dissertation argues that, even given the obvious cultural, temporal, and temperamental differences between Sun Ra and Fela, both artists' orientations toward musical composition and performance share similar preoccupations with the recitation of cultural memory and the dialogic creation of historical narratives which is called Composing the African Atlantic. In the dissertation the concept Composing the African Atlantic is proposed as a means of describing an African diasporic version of musical composition which includes many of the so-called extramusical elements of text and performance—audience participation and dialogue being key—as constitutive elements of composition such that, in their absence, the music is not fully realized. Stated in the active present tense (Composing), identified as culturally rooted (African), and formed within a broad and discursively contested space (Atlantic), Composing the African Atlantic describes the means by which composers such as Sun Ra and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti conceive of performance as an essential part of composition, enabling the musicians and audience to craft the true Text of the music through the activation of communal memory and the dialogic contestation of history. The result, in the case of both artists, is the creation of a singular compositional and performative style which maintains its connection to its core audience through the use of ritualized concert performance, the challenging of historical myths, and the performance of historical narratives which refute the Hegelian contention that Africa is "no historical part of the world." In the process, both artists assert that there is a common African cultural memory which exists throughout the African diaspora as a result, fundamentally, of the Atlantic slave trade, but which is also a living, contemporary, cosmopolitan dialectic of representation and re-presentation.

<p> This dissertation examines how poor black South African women in rural areas organize themselves to address their poverty situations and meet their practical needs &ndash; those that pertain to their responsibilities as grandmothers, mothers, and community members &ndash; and assesses their organizations' effectiveness for meeting women's goals. My research is based on two groups that are members of the South African Rural Women's Movement. They are the Sisonke Women's Club Group (SSWCG) and the Siyabonga Women's Club Group (SBWCG). A majority of these women are illiterate and were <i>de jure</i> or <i> de facto</i> heads of households. Based on interviews and participant observation, I describe and analyze the strategies that these women employ in an attempt to alleviate poverty, better their lives, and assist in the survival of their families, each other, and the most vulnerable members of their community. Their strategies involve organizing in groups to support each other's income-generating activities and to help each other in times of emergency. Their activities include making floor mats, beading, sewing, baking, and providing caregiving for members who are sick and for orphans. I conclude that, although their organizing helps meet practical needs based on their traditional roles as women, it has not contributed to meeting strategic needs &ndash; to their empowerment as citizens or as heads of households. </p>