<p> This study seeks to examine the role of presidential leadership in internationalization on historically Black college and university (HBCU) campuses. HBCUs comprise a small but important segment of U.S. higher education, as they are responsible for 20% of African American graduates in the country. Unfortunately, many of these institutions have yet to address the urgent need to internationalize their campus in a systematic, relevant way. This research study was conducted on the campuses of three public HBCUs working to advance internationalization. This study explores answers to the following questions: (a) What is the role of the President in advancing or sustaining internationalization on an HBCU campus? (b) What is the relationship between the President and the Senior International Officer (SIO)? and (c) What leadership frames do the Presidents use to advance or sustain comprehensive internationalization? Site visits to each institution included interviews with the President, the Provost, the SIO, and faculty. </p><p> Results show that the Presidents recognized their responsibility to articulate why internationalization is important for the university and how it aligns with the mission of preparing students to navigate a globally connected world. Results indicate that the Presidents impact how internationalization gets implemented through direct and indirect interaction with the SIO and by sustaining a strong infrastructure, particularly in the form of a unit responsible for internationalization initiatives. The findings indicate that while the SIO does not report directly to the President, a more effective reporting line assigns the SIO a faculty rank with a reporting line to the Provost. Analysis of the data shows that each President utilized at least one dominant leadership frames identified by Bolman and Deal (2013), two of them also exhibited a secondary frame, and none applied a multi-frame approach. With longer time at the institution, these leaders may discover the need to incorporate different leadership frames to respond to rising challenges. This study affirms the importance of presidential leadership factors in the successful implementation of internationalization on these campuses.</p><p>

<p> This study seeks to explore the historical influence of quilting within the African-American community, its development as a form of non-verbal communication, through the evolution of an organizational culture originating from the period of Reconstruction, and its relevance as a continued communication medium among quilters of today. The study will trace the influence of cultural traditions from Africa, through the period of Reconstruction to the 21st century. The goal of the research is to identify the development of cultural and organizational behaviors that influenced a sustainable form of non-verbal communication that is generational, as well as cultural, particularly among African-American women. The study will further explore the use of quilting as a new medium of non-verbal communication for social issues, giving voice many life experiences that may be overlooked. It will also explore ways in which quilting can be used to further educate others as it assumes the identity of a new and important art form. </p><p> The research will use a qualitative analysis approach, conducting interviews with generational quilters from Baltimore, MD, Charleston, Florence, Georgetown, and Beaufort, SC, who are believed to have first-hand experience of the art form due to the predominance of quilting within those specific African &ndash;American communities. In addition, a review of peer research will be assessed to evaluate the correlation between present day first-hand accounts quilting and the relevance of prior research in determining if quilting is still a culturally motivated skill. Theories founded in research studies from the science of anthropology, will describe how organizational culture is instrumental in developing specific behaviors and patterns of assimilation within a community. It will further define how values, norms and traditions provide the framework of quilting as a non-verbal means of expression within a community or culture. It is believed that the research will show that quilting has been influenced by the life experiences contained within specific cultural structures. It is also the goal of this study to prove that quilting is an art form that has been limited in its past assessment as an influential form of non-verbal communication, and personal expression, and that the craft is communicated through generations, in an historical context which has contained a predominant cultural influence among African-American women.</p><p>

This dissertation examines narratives about racialized gender, sexuality, and class through media images of black Americans with HIV/AIDS. Through textual analysis of media sites featuring HIV/AIDS and blackness (The Announcement, Precious, and Marvelyn Brown’s website, www.marvelynbrown.com), this project analyzes how the politics of respectability—a set of precepts that govern how black men and women can present themselves in public spaces to align with white ideals of gender and sexuality—construct black people in media representations of HIV/AIDS. This work examines how respectability politics deployed in media representations of HIV/AIDS and black Americans reclaim notions of acceptable black sexuality by reifying age-old stereotypes of black masculinity femininity. I argue that the goal of respectability politics in countering anti-blackness through limited parameters for acceptable presentations of racialized gender and sexuality continue to challenge and complicate media representations of HIV/AIDS and black Americans.

<p> The purpose of this project was to write a grant proposal to develop and secure funding for a mentoring program for African American youth between the ages of 13 to 18. The host agency is the Dangerfield Institute of Urban Problems Group Home located in Los Angeles, California. </p><p> The goal of the project is to implement a program that introduces African American youth to positive adult role models with the intent to secure a lasting relationship as the youth transition into adulthood. Another goal of the program is to provide the youth with the tools to explore self-development. After reviewing the funding options, the Weingart Foundation was selected as the best fit for the goals and objectives of the proposed project. </p><p> The actual submission of this grant was not a requirement for the successful completion of this project.</p>

<p> African American high school students are underrepresented in study abroad programs, and their lack of intercultural skills and international understanding can impede their personal and professional development, and limit their career opportunities. The purpose of this descriptive qualitative case study was to explore the influence of intercultural experiences through study abroad and immersion programs on African American high school students&rsquo; intercultural competence. The conceptual framework drew on 2 theories: Bennett&rsquo;s development model of intercultural sensitivity and Kolb&rsquo;s experiential learning. Data from interviews and focus groups with 13 African American high school students, 2 parents, and 2 teachers as well as documents and field notes from a Northeast United States urban high school addressed the research questions pertaining to how students perceived travel abroad that fostered intercultural competence skills as well as how teachers and parents perceived students&rsquo; personal development. Findings resulted from provisional codes used to identify pattern of codes, and central themes that indicated predeparture seminars and reflective practices enhanced intercultural skills. The portfolios suggested that most students became more reflective and accepting of cultural differences after their sojourn abroad. Recommendations based on the findings suggest increasing homestay experiences and planning and predeparture trainings. Future research is needed on how to attract more male African American students to such programs. The findings may contribute to positive social change by encouraging investment in homestay study abroad and immersion programs with adequate preparation and planning at inner city high schools that might foster intercultural competence skills.</p><p>

<p> The prevalence of trauma for Black American youth is disproportionate to other cultural groups. Child and adolescent exposure to interpersonal trauma has been found to increase the risk for both immediate and long-term mental health impairment. Research of childhood trauma has made clear the adverse effects of childhood trauma, and its&rsquo; lifelong impact in domains of psychological, interpersonal, and cognitive functioning. Trauma-Focused CBT (TF-CBT) is an evidence-based treatment that has repeatedly proven to be efficacious in the treatment of childhood trauma. By offering culturally mindful recommendations for treatment, this dissertation lends a potentially useful supplement to providers utilizing TF-CBT with Black American adolescents.</p><p>

This thesis examined how skin-tone, gender, and sexuality, within the entertainment industry, help shape the micro-level process by which racial identity is constructed in American culture. The thesis analyzed and critiqued existing ideologies of race across the Americas, with specific reference to Jamaica and the United States. Issues and questions of re-representation within American popular culture are central concerns: in particular, the ways that Black women's roles are defined and redefined through the positionality of female performance artists within the male-dominated music culture. The thesis argued then that skin-tone is fundamental to the understanding of blackness, as American society continues to view race through the lens of the popular entertainment industry. The study examined the positionality of the light-skinned/or biracial Black woman's identity is fixed sexually within the racialized context of American society. The thesis concluded that the glorification of the light-skinned/or biracial Black female recreates a socio-historical and cultural-political context that simultaneously devalues the darker-skinned Black woman.

Abstract not available.

In this dissertation I examine the discursive nature of urban renewal discourses in Springfield, Massachusetts, with a womanist method known as emancipatory historiography. Womanism, a theoretical and analytical framework that emerged in the 1980s in recognition of Alice Walker’s famous declaration that “womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender (Walker 1983), was established, in part, as a response to the failure of white feminists to be in solidarity with black women in the fight for racial and socio-economic justice. This emancipatory method, proposed by womanist Katie G. Cannon (Cannon 1995) provides a critical paradigm for rethinking the communicative nature of urban renewal planning in a local context. My intention is not to pick apart the technical aspects of urban renewal, as would a rigid examination of costs, benefits or disparities associated with local urban renewal. Rather, the purpose of this project is to carefully explore planning narratives in an effort to dislodge assumptions about the discourses, storylines or narratives that accompanied urban renewal documents in Springfield during the 1960s and 70s. The recovery of local urban renewal documents, which have gone unexamined for decades, presents the opportunity to recontextualize and reconstruct the discursive parameters of planning for the local Negro community that was displaced by urban renewal. This historical-critical womanist study of planning documents written from 1960–1980 provides the building blocks for rewriting local planning history from a standpoint that takes into account the intersectional and dialectical nature of race, place, and gender. A critique of whiteness, as an epistemological or analytical framework, is an underlying aspect of this project. The following four questions provide a basis for examining the thematic or discursive foundations of urban renewal planning material that was relative to the local Negro population. The questions that are considered in this dissertation are: (1) whose experience was validated in urban renewal documents; (2) what groups were left out of local planning discourses; (3) what ideologies or epistemologies accompanied neighborhood planning discourses; and, (4) what central logic or framework held them all together? Keywords: planning history and theory; urban renewal; womanist and feminist studies; whiteness studies; ethnic and area studies.

Contemporary Hip-Hop scholarship has revealed that Hip-Hop is a racially diverse, youth-driven culture, that is intimately connected to prior as well as on-going social justice movements (Chang, 2004; Kitwana, 2002). This study explores its Afro-Diasporic and activist origins, as well as the impact of Hip-Hop culture on the identity development of educators belonging to the Hip-Hop generation(s). This qualitative study also examines how Hip-Hop culture impacts educators' identity politics and personal pedagogy, while seeking to create a new model of Social Justice Hip-Hop Pedagogy. This study was produced through twenty-three in-depth interviews with influential Hip-Hop educators or “elites” (Thomas, 1993; Aberbach & Rockman, 2002; Becker & Meyers, 1974; Zuckerman, 1974) from diverse backgrounds and geographic locations. There are currently limited theoretical and conceptual frameworks in the literature supporting the use of Hip-Hop as Social Justice Pedagogy, yet is currently being used in K-16 educational contexts throughout the United States and abroad (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008). The results of this study reveal the foundational basis consisting of four primary functions and seven practical tenets, necessary to negotiate and implement a new and innovative model for Social Justice Hip-Hop Pedagogy.