This dissertation explores the importance of representations of sound in the African American literary tradition. Beginning with Frederick Douglass's descriptions of the slave songs and working through depictions of jazz in the early moments of the Civil Rights movement, I show that the aural dimension of African American culture has mediated black writers' engagement with written public discourse. Looking at such diverse works as slave narratives, essays, music books, serial fiction, autobiography, and the novel, this project demonstrates that the tension between aurality and the printed word motivates much of the political work that African American literary texts accomplish. By excavating the various strategies that black writers use to resolve this tension I argue that sound, especially music, functions in African American literature to allow black writers to engage in intertextual discourses that utilize aurality to speak across temporal and stylistic boundaries that have previously limited our critical inquiries. While critics have afforded substantial attention to African American musical culture and its influence on black writing---most notably Houston A. Baker's work on the "Blues Matrix" and Alexander G. Weheliye's notion of "Sonic Afro-Modernity"---this criticism has focused on specific musical forms as structuring agents that exert a direct influence upon black literature. My dissertation not only expands the site of critical inquiry to include non-musical sound, but also focuses on the ways that black writers foreground aurality as more than a means of accessing black musical traditions, but also to create an inter-textual connection to a black literary tradition as well. My dissertation shows that the African American aural tradition, and the inherent problems that accompany any attempt to represent it in writing, has provided black writers a common site from which they can enter into literary genres and styles that are otherwise racially coded as non-black while still maintaining a strong connection to the African American literary tradition.

<p> Single parent families are a prevalent trend among the African American community. Low socioeconomics and compromised maternal monitoring challenge the family structure of single African American families. These challenges produce negative psychosocial outcomes for African Americans. The purpose of this project was to design a one-year program and identify a funding source to write a grant proposal. The goal of the program was to provide psycho-educational groups to increase single African American mothers' knowledge of effective communication and conflict resolution. Additionally, the program was designed to provide emotional support. Long Beach Memorial Medical Center was selected as the host agency. The Annenberg Foundation was selected as a potential funding source. The actual submission and/or funding of this grant were not a requirement for the successful completion of this project.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to gain a rich understanding of successful African American male student-athletes' perspectives on factors that supported their academic success in California community colleges. Using phenomenological methods, 13 African American male student-athletes from a large suburban single-campus community college were interviewed. Twelve of the 13 student-athletes participated in intercollegiate football, and one played basketball. The interview sample was comprised of students with ages spanning from 19 to 23 and grade point averages varying from 2.12 to 3.57, with most of the students above a 2.5 grade point average. The results of this study provide a unique look into the lives of African American male student-athletes as they describe their individual journeys that have led to their academic success. The young men discussed the effects of family, finances, relationship negotiation, academic resources, academic integration, and racial issues that served as a support to their success rather than as a barrier. This study raises awareness of the struggles Black student-athletes encounter in college and their resiliency in overcoming challenges by utilizing the barriers they face as motivation to succeed in both their athletic and academic endeavors. Additionally, this study provides insights that administrators, program developers, and educational leaders can use to ensure inclusiveness and to enhance programs and academic pathways that intentionally support first-generation, underrepresented, underserved students.</p>

<p> Moral injury is a concept that has been applied to the challenges facing veterans returning from combat due to the discrepancy between their moral values and the behaviors they engaged in due to war. In recovery women have expressed similar challenges due to the illicit behavior they engaged in while in their addiction as well as the prevalence of trauma that has impacted their transition into substance use. Thirteen female participants in treatment for substance abuse participated in this qualitative study. The majority of the women experienced a history of childhood and/or adult trauma that perpetuated their use of substances as a means of coping, created a sense of social isolation, and shame. The concept of moral injury was identified by the participants as a process that deepened with each subsequent transgression. </p>

This dissertation addresses the works of art of two free men of color, Vicente Escobar (1762-1834) and José Antonio Aponte (date of birth unknown-1812), who lived in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Havana. I offer the first consideration of these two artists together in order to illuminate the scope of visual artistic practice of free people of color prior to the foundation of the fine arts academy, the Academia de San Alejandro, in 1818. Creole and Spanish elites who supported the foundation of the school expressed concern that blacks had been “dominating” the arts and excluded them from studying there. I posit that both Escobar and Aponte worked as self-aware artists prior to the elite project of the fine arts academy, which followed an unclear path after its foundation. Escobar painted the portraits of colonial society’s Spanish and creole elites. The works span the dates from 1785 to 1829. Aponte’s only known work of art – a so-called libro de pinturas (book of paintings) found in 1812 – no longer exists. However, a textual description of the book survives in the court record that documents his trial for conspiring to plan slave rebellions across the island. Aponte collaged together an array of images to depict a “universal black history” that we are now forced to imagine as the original work of art has been lost. I argue that both artists, through their artistic practices, embodied a self-awareness as artists that they directed to transformative ends. These artistic practices – as advanced by the works themselves as well as how they were produced and received – involved the articulation of two axes. The first axis moved from the representation of the visible, in the case of Escobar’s portraits, to the representation of the invisible, in the case of Aponte’s book of paintings. The second axis measures how the works themselves could be “historically effective” – following T.J. Clark – and transform a colonial black identity, operating on the scale of the individual to that of a larger community. For Escobar, his artistic practice was personal; for Aponte, his artistic vision extended beyond himself. / History of Art and Architecture

Transforming Trauma: Memory and Slavery in Black Atlantic Literature since 1830 examines the interplay between remembering and forgetting in literary and cultural engagements with the trauma of transatlantic slavery. The dissertation considers how intergenerational, trans-temporal trauma becomes re-narrativized and re-envisioned over time in four symbolic sites of slavery (five countries)—Africa (Ghana and Mozambique), the Caribbean (Cuba), Brazil, and the United States—with the goal of exposing differences and emphasizing ruptures. Each chapter functions like a slave schooner arriving at an outpost of the African Diaspora, touring an eclectic transatlantic archive of slavery including art, public space, newspaper clippings, telenovelas, monuments (both imagined and built), song, and advertising copy, then dropping an anchor to explore a more traditional cross section of literature from each national context, juxtaposing canonical and non-canonical works. Taken together, the chapters probe the ways nineteenth and twentieth century Inter-American and African “texts,” broadly defined, register the trauma of slavery in the Black Atlantic. Chapter 1 discusses Brazilian author Bernardo Guimarães’ short novel, A Escrava Isaura (1875) and its wildly popular telenovela adaption in 1976 as an example of one of slavery’s twentieth century kitsch manifestations. The theme of Exodus in African American literature is considered in chapter 2 with a reading of Frances E.W. Harper’s 1869 poem, “Moses,” followed by an extended exploration of the early twentieth century Mammy cult including the 1922 statue proposal. Chapter 3 explores scenes of racial violence and offers a reading of the horrific American ritual of lynching in Jean Toomer’s “Kabnis” and “Portrait in Georgia” in Cane (1923) followed by textual analysis of Robert Hayden’s “Middle Passage” (1962, 1966). Chapter 4 focuses on the Brazilian collective memory of the old historic district of Pelourinho in Salvador, Bahia as the former site of punishment at the pillory (whipping post) for enslaved Africans. Close readings in this chapter include Castro Alves’s classic epic poem, “O navio negreiro” from Os Escravos (1883) and Carolina Maria de Jesus’s diary of favela life, O Quarto de Despejo (1960) in addition to shorter readings of the poetry of Alzira Rufino, Esmeralda Ribeiro, Francisco Alvim, and a short novel by Dudda Seixas. Chapter 5 engages with the charged metaphor of sugar and compares the only extant nineteenth century Cuban slave narrative, Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiografía de un esclavo (1839) with a twentieth century account of maroon Esteban Montejo’s slave narrative as related to anthropologist/writer Miguel Barnet in Cimarrón: Historia de un esclavo (1966). The final chapter addresses the so-called literary African amnesia around slavery and examines vestiges of the memory of slavery in three African texts: Noémia de Sousa’s “Negra” (1949), Ama Ata Aidoo’s The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965), and Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons (1973).

Violent Disruptions contends that the works of Richard Wright and William Faulkner are mirror images of each other and that each illustrates American race relations in distinctly powerful and prescient ways. While Faulkner portrays race and American identity through sex and its relationship to the imagination, Wright reveals a violent undercurrent beneath interracial encounters that the shared imagination triggers. Violent Disruptions argues that the spectacle of the interracial body anchors the cultural imaginations of our collective society and, as it embodies and symbolizes American slavery, drives the violent acts of individuals. Interracial productions motivate the narratives of Richard Wright and William Faulkner through a system of displacement of signs. Though these tropes maintain their currency today, they are borne out of cultural imaginings over two hundred years old. Working within the framework of the imaginary, Violent Disruptions places these now historical texts into the twenty-first century's discourse of race and American identity. / African and African American Studies

<p> The academic deficits of African American males are sadly well documented. National test data show African American male students falling woefully behind in reading and math. Only 12% of African American males scored proficient in reading on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress and only 13% scored proficient in Grade 8 math. African American males are also consistently absent from school which further impacts academic performance and the likelihood of graduating from high school. However, research indicates that students who participate in school-sponsored activities were more likely to persist in school. African American male students who participated in sports not only attend school more regularly, but also increased their grade point averages. </p><p> Long Beach Poly High School, the &ldquo;Home of Scholars and Champions,&rdquo; has a long-standing tradition of successfully preparing student athletes to accept athletic scholarships from colleges and universities. Many African American males who participate in high school sports, especially football and basketball, dream of earning athletic scholarships to play their sport in college. In hopes of replicating this experience for student athletes in other urban high schools, this qualitative case study was driven by one central research question: What systems of academic support does Long Beach Poly High School provide for African American male student athletes who aspire to earn Division 1 scholarships? Addressing three sub-questions, this study explored academic structures, co-curricular and extracurricular activities, and the extent of systems implementation. Operationalizing critical race theory as a framework, the researcher interviewed seven academic and athletic staff members and a focus group of five student athletes to understand the systems in place at Poly.</p><p> The findings illustrate how Poly has intentionally constructed an academic system of support for any student athletes&rsquo; aspirations. This system began with the student athlete&rsquo;s undeniable commitment to his academic program, whereby the academic and athletic staff, work collaboratively with teachers, support personnel, and parents to share accountability with the student athlete. With multiple opportunities for tutorials and additional assistance, student athletes delay gratification. They sacrifice today for a dream that will be born tomorrow. The mystique of being a &ldquo;Jackrabbit,&rdquo; and a rich history of academic and athletic excellence merited studying the unique environment of Long Beach Poly High School. Further recommendations for policy, practice, and research are presented and discussed.</p>

<p> For African Americans kidney disease is the sixth leading cause of death (National Kidney Foundation (NKF) 2013). Compliance with a renal diet can help prevent the progression of kidney disease to kidney failure. The purpose of this study was to investigate compliance or non-compliance with renal dietary restrictions among older African American adults living in a nursing home setting. Twelve residents were interviewed. Six themes emerged including not appreciating being treated like a child, wanting options and independence, wanting the renal diet to respect cultural food traditions, the importance of food taste, more education about why certain foods are better than others, and re-framing diet education to emphasize the foods that can be eaten versus foods to avoid.</p><p> This research indicates a need for dietitians to discuss diet with an emphasis on what foods the patient can eat, not on restrictions, and to improve the taste of food.</p>

<p> John Taylor was an ex-slave and Civil War veteran who settled in Southwest Colorado in the early 1870s. Taylor claimed that he was "the first white man to settle the Pine River Valley." Taylor was not passing for white and his claim was never a rejection of his African American self. Taylor's claim emerged out of a unique racial niche available to a handful of African Americans who appeared in the Southwest borderlands during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This study, using family oral histories and archival documents, looks at two historically situated social forces operating in the formation of his identity. The first includes what Omi and Winant describe as "racial projects." A number of the racial projects of the "frontier" created in some cases a racial divide, which buffered the oppression of African Americans because whiteness was based on not being regarded as an American Indian, "Mexican" or Asian. This racial dynamic was one of the social forces informing the logic of Taylor's claim. Indigenous culture and language constituted a second influence on Taylor's identity, particularly indigenous articulations of whiteness and the concept of the black white man. In previous studies focusing on the African American experience in the West, the concept of the black white man received little attention by historians. Even the history concentrating on the interaction between American Indians with the African Diaspora have not fully explored this concept, nor has it been considered in looking at the formation of white identity in North America. One of the unique contributions of this study is to seriously consider indigenous voices from a variety of sources, which include oral history and tribal languages, in the construction of identity. John Taylor's claim that he was a black white man remains a prime example of how one's identity takes form, changes and persists within the context of social historical structures.</p>