<p> African American adolescents have inadequate self-management behaviors, particularly during middle adolescence (14-16 years of age). Inaccurate beliefs, degree of asthma impairment (well controlled or not well controlled), and gender could influence asthma self-management (symptom management, medication management, and environmental control). The researcher used the illness representations concept from the common sense self-regulation model as the framework for this study. </p><p> The descriptive correlational study explored (1) differences in illness representations (cognitive and emotional) and self-management behaviors by gender, asthma impairment, and gender by asthma impairment of African American adolescents with asthma; and (2) relationships between illness representations and asthma self-management behaviors, gender, and asthma impairment in 133 African American adolescents with asthma. Data were collected using the Asthma Control Test, the Illness Perceptions Questionnaire-Revised, and the Asthma Self-Care Practice Instrument. Data were analyzed using ANOVA, MANOVA, Pearson correlations, and multiple regressions. </p><p> Findings indicated that females whose asthma was not well controlled had more beliefs about the chronicity of their asthma than those who were well controlled. However, there were no differences in such beliefs among males whose asthma was not well controlled from those who were well controlled. Well controlled adolescents differed from not well controlled adolescents for cognitive representations of cyclic timeline, treatment control, psychological attributes, and consequences as well as for emotional representations. There were no significant differences in the means of the self-management behaviors by gender, by asthma impairment, or by gender by asthma impairment. A significant bivariate relationship was found between representations of identity, consequences, treatment control, and symptom management. In the multiple regression model, representations of treatment control and consequences contributed to variances in symptom management; however, no other representations, gender, or asthma impairment variables were statistically significant. The representations, gender, and asthma impairment variables did not contribute to variances in medication management or environmental control. Limited studies have been conducted with African American adolescents with asthma; therefore, the findings will contribute information to the literature on their illness representations and self-management behaviors. The findings also contribute to the literature information based on adolescents' genders and levels of asthma impairment. </p>

<p>After the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Fall of 2005, millions of dollars of Northern philanthropic aid have poured into the Gulf Coast, as have volunteers, rebuilding professionals, and NGO workers. Subsequently, New Orleans has witnessed an explosion of NGOs and Social Enterprises, all intent on rebuilding the city and "doing good" for its residents. However, it was not simply the opening of the economic floodgates that has drawn so many outsiders to the city, it was also the threat to New Orleans' mythic exceptionalism as the so-called "Creole Capital," which has spurred so many willing foot soldiers to action. Drawing on ethnographic material gleaned from participant observation, interviews, and some archival research, this dissertation attempts to demystify the social and cultural forces shaping New Orleans' ongoing process of rebuilding and recovery. Special attention is paid to the role of the arts and of aesthetics as political tools, and forms of capital available to Black actors. Illuminating the political and economic contexts within which the work of community building takes place reveals both the possibilities and the limitations which face Black New Orleanians, embedded in this dynamic landscape. Attending to external forces as well as internal relationships, it becomes clear that Black artist-activists see institution-building as a way to 1) build upon some of the only forms of capital available to Black New Orleanians - that is, social and cultural capital; 2) organize Black communities and begin to exercise some forms of Black Power; and 3) to sustain local social movements.</p> / Dissertation

<p> This study draws a rich, vivid portrait of a marginalized and hidden dance community and how it made a visible impact on the mainstream and in countries around the world. In the 1980s black and Latino teens in Los Angeles performed a street dance called pop locking. During this time dancing helped keep urban teens out of gangs and create positive identities. In the 1990s pop locking went underground, but less than ten years later returned in areas outside of Los Angeles. This allowed 1980s dancers to serve as teachers and mentors to new dancers. </p><p> Twenty-seven pop lockers who danced from the 1980s to the 2000s were interviewed from June 2010 to July 2013. These interviews capture the history of the dance that started on the streets of California. Participant observation was conducted at Homeland Cultural Center in Long Beach, which is a hub for pop locking in Southern California.</p>

<p> This study examines young, Black women's hair practices and perspectives within the current wave of the Natural Hair Movement. Based on twelve in-depth interviews with Black women in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, this analysis uses Black feminist thought and standpoint theory to center the concept of "natural" hair and explore participants' relationships to it. The analysis is attentive to the ways family, peers, and media have influenced Black women's hair practices and perspectives, and grounds these in the history of racialized, gendered, and class-related perceptions of Black women's hair. My interviews reveal that "natural" has become such a desirable label that even Black women in this study who straighten their hair consider themselves "natural" due to the term's newfound subjective meaning. This indicates that the Natural Hair Movement has contributed to the rhetorical success of this label, even while its meaning has now expanded so broadly that it includes nearly every hair care practice other than chemical relaxing. While some may argue that this inclusive definition of "natural" dilutes an important cultural distinction between Afrocentric and Eurocentric hair practices, it may also indicate that these Black women seek not to be divided over hairstyle preferences but rather, seek a collective identity as Black women who are free to make informed choices on the basis of what is important to them.</p>

<p> This study was focused on the identification of selected risk factors seemingly present among African American male adolescents 13 to 18 years old who were participants in special education programs at their schools. Many of these male adolescents were also found to participate in the juvenile justice system under what was characterized as disproportionate placement. Through the perusal of several sources, including but not limited to parents, educators, law enforcement personnel, principals, counselors, and experienced teachers involved with special education students, it was realized these regular special students were experiencing disproportionate placement. The purpose of this study was to compare perspectives of parents and selected law enforcement personnel regarding risk factors that may contribute to their placement in special education and the U.S. Department of Justice. The research design was descriptive and established association between/among the variables under study. The data were collected, coded, and analyzed using the SPSS software package. The data revealed that parents and selected law enforcement personnel strongly agreed with 9 of the 21 descriptive statements, disagreed with 1 of the statements, and were undecided regarding 1 of the statements. This research provides educators, parents, administrators, juvenile justice officials, and superintendents involved in making decisions related to placement and instruction with specific information to aid them in making appropriate decisions. </p>

<p> In contrast the plethora of between-race studies in the extant literature that focus on well-known and documented disparities between White and African American students, this study was conducted to gain direct insight from resilient, African American boys who beat the odds and achieved academically despite being at significant risk for failure due to extended exposure to compounded social and educational disadvantages. The primary foci of this investigation were to broaden understanding of the gender-specific challenges to academic achievement that African American boys encounter in school, understand how they overcome those challenges to succeed academically, and identify school-level enabling characteristics that contribute to their success &ndash; each from their perspective. Using semi-structured interviews with eight African American middle school boys, the findings of this study illustrate how these students accomplished proficient on state assessments in reading and mathematics &ndash; a feat that 85% of their peers did not accomplish nationwide.</p>

<p> This action research study was undertaken to identify how African Americans perceived and understood the many facets of hospice care, and to identify any barriers they faced in dealing with end-of-life care, any problems they encountered with enrollment in hospice care, and how they utilized hospice services. Qualitative interviews conducted with 10 African American participants resulted in the identification of eight major themes related to end-of-life care. Results indicated that African Americans perceived and understood hospice care through a religious or spiritual lens, and believed that hospice permitted them to continue to be the primary caregivers of their terminally ill. These are two of the identified themes. Results also indicated several cultural, institutional, familial, and individual barriers. These included a lack of pastoral or local church referral to hospice care, family awareness of hospice services, revocation or discharge from hospice care, historic mistrust of the healthcare system, pain management, and prior knowledge and experience of hospice care by the participant. Interventions included family conferencing with fictive kin and friends of the participants about hospice philosophy and services, aggressive outreach to African American pastors and allowing their involvement in the decision-making process, seminars were conducted in African American churches concerning the scope and benefits of hospice services, radio advertisements targeted African American communities on the use of hospice care, and two funeral homes provided preplanning advice to African American churches on funeral arrangements, advanced directives, end-of-life documents, and financial matters.</p>

<p> This qualitative narrative inquiry study involved exploring the perceptions of African American women about career advancement in public school administration. The research questions guided the exploration of perceptions and experiences about seeking positions of authority in public school systems administration in the state of California: What are the identifiable factors slowing career advancement for African American women seeking positions of authority in public education? How can other African American women avoid identifiable factors that slow career advancement? What supports should be in place to aid African American women on their quest to attain positions of authority in public education? Purposeful sampling was used to select five African American women administrators seeking career advancement in public schools. Transcriptions of audio-recorded interviews yielded data for analysis with the NVivo 9 computer analysis program. The perceptions and lived experiences of the participants were compiled and themes identified to determine the factors influencing career advancement of African American women to upper administration in public education. Five core themes embodied the main findings of the study: Personal Traits and Priorities, Exclusion Experiences, Extrinsic Motivation, Understandings, and Supports. Recommendations in the study include African American women increasing self-awareness and situational awareness within the organizational context and leaders gaining understanding about the unique characteristics, traits, qualities, and contributions of the African American women within their organization. Other recommendations include creating and evaluating a succession plan or policy for all individuals desiring career advancement, developing a leadership academy with an emphasis on diversity programs and multiculturalism supporting the succession plan and policies, and developing a pool of qualified candidates. Implementation of these recommendations may change policies and practices in public school systems to ensure fairness and equity for all members desiring career advancement. </p>

<p> Stratford Hall Plantation&rsquo;s Oval Site was once a dynamic 18th-century farm quarter that was home to an enslaved community and overseer charged with growing Virginia&rsquo;s cash crop: tobacco. No documentary evidence references the site, leaving archaeology as the only means to reconstruct the lives of the site&rsquo;s inhabitants. This research uses the results of a macrobotanical analysis conducted on soil samples taken from an overseer&rsquo;s basement and a dual purpose slave quarter/kitchen cellar at the Oval Site to understand what the site&rsquo;s residents were eating and how the acquisition, production, processing, provisioning, and consumption of food impacted their daily lives. The interactive nature of the overseer, enslaved community, and their respective botanical assemblages suggests that food was not only used as sustenance, it was also a medium for social interaction and mutual dependence between the two groups. </p><p> The botanical assemblage is also utilized to discuss how the consumption of provisioned, gathered, and produced foods illustrate the ways that Stratford&rsquo;s enslaved inhabitants formed communities and exerted agency through food choice. A mixture of traditional African, European, and native/wild taxa were recovered from the site, revealing the varied cultural influences that affected the resident&rsquo;s cuisine. The assemblage provides evidence for ways that the site&rsquo;s enslaved Africans and African Americans adapted to the local environment, asserted individual and group food preferences, and created creolized African American identities as they sought to survive and persist in the oppressive plantation landscape. </p><p> The results from the Oval Site are compared to nine other 18th- and 19th-century plantation sites in Virginia to demonstrate how food was part of the cultural creolization process undergone by enslaved Africans and African Americans across the region. The comparison further shows that diverse, creolized food preferences developed by enslaved communities can be placed into a regional framework of foodways patterns. Analyzing the results on a regional scale acknowledges the influence of individual preferences and identities of different communities on their food choices, while still demonstrating how food was consistently both a mechanism and a product of African American community formation.</p><p>

<p> This project explores the constructions of gender, intimacy, and race and the ways these issues are informed by history and the law. The idea of consent, while originally described in texts as a legal concept between citizens, transformed into a way to navigate intimate relationships in the private sphere. This muddied the ways women and men were understood to form relationships and the limits of those relationships. In the same ways that gender was arbitrated through legal language, race is often ensnared in the same processes and institutions. Tolerance has been offered as one approach, but instead of mitigating this violence, it has more firmly entrenched it into the democratic process. Hannah Arendt&rsquo;s description of the social frames an understanding of intimacy and narratives. Arendt&rsquo;s work critically creates a space for the category of the social, something found around but outside of the public and private. Instead of working to make the private seen as a sphere for political action, I will focus on the potential of the social as a method of political action. While Arendt has obvious racial bias, I will use her own response to anti-semitism to develop a different approach to Black politics that allow for identity-based responses. Lauren Berlant&rsquo;s <i>Intimate Publics</i> addresses the potential for coalition building in the social. Using the sorority system as a way of teasing out notions of femininity, discipline, sexual violence, and intimacy, I will describe the ways that a woman subject is produced and how this then works to shape our notions of race. Women&rsquo;s identities, particularly white women, are constructed through an association with race and sexuality, by unpacking this development, its possible to see how this is socially and institutionally enforced. Part of this enforcement will focus on the narratives of sexual violence. Rape is an issue that not only confronts legal questions, but also the nature of a woman&rsquo;s ability to participate in democracy. Tying this together will be the importance of political theory. This serves to define the contemporary issues, solutions that have been offered and new potential approaches to intimate violence.</p><p>