Using Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War as a starting point, this thesis seeks to craft and engage in a larger dialogue about the complex global entanglements of art, trade, slavery, war, commemoration, and race that have existed since the first contacts between Europe and Africa. In September 2019 in New York’s Time Square, Wiley unveiled the monument to be permanently installed outside of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia. This large work shows a black man in contemporary dress on a horse, created to counterbalance the ubiquitous Confederate equestrian monuments of the south. While this is an important step in the ongoing debate about public monuments of the United States, the equestrian depiction of rulers and warriors has not always been limited to white men. In the sixteenth century, the Edo peoples of Nigeria depicted their ruler, Oba Esigie, atop a horse in the bronze plaque Equestrian Oba and Attendants, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Through material and iconographical analysis, I will show how the Benin plaque signifies peaceful relations and trade with the Portuguese. This interaction also marks the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade, which informed the dehumanizing beliefs of the commissioners of Confederate monuments as well as the colonizers who ultimately removed the plaque from Africa altogether. In this way, the histories embedded within the plaque can serve to enhance the new monument’s meaning. This pairing shows the continued stakes of the history of exploration in the Early Modern period, as the encounters in Nigeria that made the plaque possible and placed it in the Met makes necessary the monument by the Nigerian-American artist in the former Confederate capital. / Art History

Black males are more likely than others to attend alternative education programs and schools (McCall, 2003; Howard, 2008). Alternative high schools and programs tend to serve a disproportionate number of male students, students of color, at risk students, and economically disadvantaged students (McNulty & Roseboro, 2009; Watson, 2011). A significant number of Black male students will pursue the GED credential in these programs. This ethnographic study focuses on Black male students who have dropped out of traditional high school prior to attending a GED program in a Northeastern city. This study addresses the following questions: How do Black males' perceptions of caring and educational experiences in an alternative GED program differ from experiences in their former traditional high school? This study uses an intersectionality theoretical framework. As Black males are more likely to attend alternative schools, prioritizing race, gender, and class are essential in this study. Findings indicate that students experience more caring environments in the alternative GED program. The results also indicate that students' experiences in their formal high schools are fraught with disciplinary problems and uncaring environments. / Urban Education

The study of historic-period pottery cuts across many disciplines (e.g., historical archaeology, material culture studies, American studies, art history, decorative arts, fine arts). Studies of historic pottery with provenience from the United States are largely centered on fine-bodied wares, such as porcelain, white salt-glazed stoneware, creamware, pearlware, whiteware, ironstone (or white granite), and kaolin smoking pipes. These wares share the common attribute of whiteness: white paste and painted, slipped, or printed decoration that typically incorporate the color white into its motif. Disenfranchised groups had limited direct-market access to these wares due to its high value (Miller 1980, 1991). White pottery was disproportionately consumed by White people until the nineteenth century. This dissertation examines colonoware—an earth-toned, non-white, polythetic kind of coarse earthenware. Archaeologists commonly encounter colonoware in plantation contexts and believe that colonoware was crafted by Native American, African, and African American potters between the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries (Deetz 1999; Espenshade and Kennedy 2002:210; Gerth and Kingsley 2014; Heite 2002; Madsen 2005:107). Colonoware researchers have engaged with collections and archaeologically excavated samples from the lower Middle Atlantic, American Southeast and Caribbean for over fifty years since the “discovery” of the pottery at Colonial Williamsburg—then called “Colono-Indian Ware”—by Ivor Noël Hume (1962). Comparatively less research has been conducted on colonoware with American Northeast provenience (see Catts 1988; Sansevere 2017). This dissertation “excavates” evidence of Northeastern colonoware that has been deeply buried—buried within obscure literature, buried by centuries of soil accrual only recently moved by compliance archaeology, and buried by the fifty-something-year-old myth that colonoware was only manufactured and used in the lower Middle Atlantic, American Southeast and Caribbean. The lives of northern bondsmen have been largely concealed in the historical record, yet these individuals were clearly a very visible part of northern society and the examination of northern colonoware helps tell that story. The circumstances that precipitated the excavation of northern sites that contain colonoware, the individuals who chose to collect northern colonoware, and my own experience accessing northern colonoware collections shapes how knowledge of the past is made, provides perspective on the mechanisms that control access to heritage, demonstrates how bias is created in object-based research, and reveals the politics at play. Lastly, I speculate that colonoware contained significant meaning for northern users between the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries and discuss the changing value of this non-white pottery in contemporaneous society. / Anthropology

This work addresses the following question: How has the prominent scholarly literature on the Cayman Islands promoted a discourse that serves to undermine the acknowledgment of African contributions as well as African self-identification in the country? Utilizing an Afrocentric inquiry, the method of content analysis was employed to interrogate selected texts using location theory. It was found that the majority of literature on the Cayman Islands, as well as the dominant ideology within the Caribbean has indeed undermined the acknowledgement of African contributions as well as African self-identification in the country. More scholarship is needed that examines the experiences of African descended people living in the Caribbean from their own perspective, and critically engages dislocated texts. / African American Studies

This study examined the experiences and perceptions of black male middle school students in an urban visual art class. Black male students have endured unequal educational outcomes such as dropping out of school at a higher rate than many of their peers of other races (NCES, 2013). Previous studies have shown that many students who have considered leaving school cite a lack of engagement in the education setting as one of the key reasons they attend school less and may eventually drop out (Yazzie-Mintz, 2010; Fredricks J. A., Blumenfeld, Friedel, & Paris, 2005). Research has also shown a correlation between high school dropout rates and student performance, attendance, and engagement in 8th grade (English, 2007; Yazzie-Mintz, 2010). Increased levels of engagement have also been shown to lead to improvements in student attendance, behavior and academic outcomes (Finn & Rock, 1997; Marks, 2000; Willingham, Pollack, & Lewis, 2002). The arts have long been seen as areas of study in which students show indications of increased engagement. The present study will add to this body of research by examining how black male students experience the art classroom and how such classes impact their overall sense of engagement. Data gathered for this study includes observations of student behaviors and interactions in their art classes. Five black male 8th grade students comprised the key study participants. Interviews were formulated to gain background information and to ascertain how the observed classroom setting was perceived from these students’ perspectives. Additional data was gathered from teacher interviews. This data provided a context for student analyzing perspectives. The literature for this study helped to explain the role engagement plays in educational outcomes, observable measures of engagement, the value of an increased emphasis on the arts for middle school students, discernible practices that differentiate arts classrooms from other classes, and the processes through which students make meaning of their experiences. / Urban Education

This dissertation examines President Barack Obama as a symbol and his rhetoric through an Afrocentric analytical lens. The problem that prompted my research was the current process (and future probability) of President Barack Obama's image and legacy being drastically revised from the current perceptions held by most who observe him daily. In this study, the researcher utilized an empirical, symbolic, and rhetorical approach to conduct an Afrocentric data analysis. This process included a review of the foundational terms and concepts utilized to express the Afrocentric idea (including Afrocentricity, location, and agency), and ultimately led to new concepts, analytical tools, and theories based on the evidence manifested over the course this study. This text represents an attempt to seize the magnitude of the "Democratic day" that Barack Obama was elected in a way that it could strengthen understanding of the Afrocentric idea. Based upon the analytical foundation of Afrocentricity I presented a methodology described as Beneficial Extraction method that will highlight the information, examples, strategies and attributes that can be utilized, salvaged and implemented for the uplift of African people. My findings include, the need for an increase in the appreciation for incremental progress in the African/African American community and the need to refine the ability to recognize and benefit from multiple and diverse methods of struggle throughout the African Diaspora. / African American Studies

This thesis is an ethnographically-informed case study that uncovers the history of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s in Dallas, Texas and surrounding cities. These movements were said to have been nonexistent. This study utilizes the methods of conducting interviews conducted with integral participants of both movements and the researching of archived newspaper articles, court records, and cultural media (flyers, posters, leaflets, etc) to provide a concise, critical view of this period in Dallas. / African American Studies

This project argues that Octavia's Butler's construction of the black woman characters is unique within the pantheon of late eighties African-American writers primarily through Butler's celebration of black female physicality and the agency the black body provides. The project is divided into five sections beginning with an intensive examination of Butler's ur-character, Anyanwu. This character is vitally important in discussing Butler's canon because she embodies the attributes and thematic issues that run throughout the author's work, specifically, the author's argument that black woman are provided opportunity through their bodies. Chapter two addresses the way black women's femininity is judged: their sexual activity. In this chapter, I explore one facet of Octavia Butler's narrative examination of sexual co-option and her subsequent implied challenge to definitions of feminine morality through the character Lilith who appears throughout Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy. Specifically, I explore this subject using Harriet Jacobs' seminal autobiography and slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as the prism in which I historically focus the conversation. In chapter three, I move the discussion into an exploration of black motherhood. Much like the aforementioned challenge to femininity vis-à-vis sexual morality, Octavia Butler often challenges and interrogates the traditional definition of motherhood, specifically, the relationship between mother and daughter. I will focus on different aspects of that mother/daughter relationship in two series, the Patternist sequence, which includes, in chronological order, Wild Seed, Mind of my Mind and Patternmaster. Chapter four discusses Butler's final novel, Fledgling, and how the novel's protagonist, Shori not only fits into the matrix of Butler characters but represents the culmination of the privileging of black female physicality that I observe in the author's entire canon. Specifically, while earlier characters are shown to create opportunities and venues of agency through their bodies, in Shori, Butler posits a character whose existence is predicated on its blackness and discusses how that purposeful racial construction leads to freedom. / English

This project will expand and extend the current concept of homeplace, as offered by cultural critic and scholar bell hooks. In doing so, it will assess the various ways that home has been constructed by persons of African descent, and suggests that homeplace is a form of maroonage that is manifested both physically and psychologically. In addition to conceptually theorizing on homeplace, this project will also introduce Homeplace Theory, a theoretical prescriptive to the issue of diminished and erased cultural consciousness amongst persons of African descent. Additionally, this project will explain the historical and socio-cultural role the Africana woman plays in the creation and maintenance of homeplace. By privileging Afrocentricity as the primary theoretical thrust, Homeplace Theory finds an intellectual home within the Afrocentric Paradigm with the addition of Afrocentric principles in the creation and explanation of Homeplace Theory. Afrocentricity also validates the subjective inquiry of African derived phenomena. In this regard, this project fortifies the intellectual subjective investigation of the Afrocentric enterprise within the discipline of Africology/Africana Studies/African American Studies. / African American Studies

"Materializing Blackness: The Politics and Production of African Diasporic Heritage” examines how intellectual and civic histories collide with the larger trends in the arts and culture sector and the local political economy to produce exhibitions at the African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP) and structure the work that museum exhibitions do to produce race visually for various audiences. Black museums are engaged in the social construction of race through their exhibitions and programs: selecting historical facts, objects and practices, and designating them as heritage for and to their audiences. In tracking this work, I am interested in 1) the assemblages of exhibits that are produced, as a function of 2) the internal logics of the producing institutions and 3) larger forces that structure the field as a whole. Looking at exhibits that engage Blackness, I examine how heritage institutions use art and artifacts to visually produce race, how their audiences consume it, and how the industry itself is produced as a viable consumptive market. Undergirded by the ways anthropologists of race and ethnicity have been explored and historicized race as a social construction I focus on an instantiation of the ways race is constructed in real time in the museum. This project engages deeply with inquiries about the social construction of race and Blackness, such as: how is Blackness rendered coherent by the art and artifacts in exhibitions? How are these visual displays of race a function of the museums that produce them and political economy of the field of arts and culture? Attending to the visual, intellectual, and political economic histories of networks of exhibiting institutions and based on ethnographic fieldwork in and on museums and other exhibiting institutions, this dissertation contextualizes and traces the production and circulation of the art and artifacts that produce the exhibitions and the museum itself as a way to provide a contemporary concrete answer. Overall “Materializing Blackness” makes the case for history and political economy as ghosts of production that have an outsized impact on what we see on exhibition walls, and are as important to the visual work as a result. Further it takes the Black museum as a site of anthropological engagement as a way to see the conjuncture of the aesthetic and the political, the historical and the material in one complicated node of institution building and racecraft in the neoliberal city. / Anthropology