This dissertation situates concerns of food access and nutrition at the center of United States struggles for racial justice during the long civil rights era. The persistence of widespread hunger amidst agricultural abundance created a need and an organizing opportunity that proponents of black freedom readily seized, recognizing the capacity of food to perpetuate oppression and to promote human equality. These efforts took many forms. Chapter One examines the dietary laws and food economy of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. Muhammad's prohibition of pork, processed commodities, and "soul food" aimed to improve the health of black Americans while elevating them morally and spiritually. Muslim food enterprises established to provision the Black Muslim diet encouraged black industry, autonomy, and self-help by mirroring the white capitalist food system. Chapter Two analyzes the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's Food for Freedom campaign of the early 1960s. In response to local efforts to thwart voter registration by withholding federal food aid from Mississippi sharecroppers, SNCC launched a nationwide food drive. SNCC's assessment of food security as a civil right, directly linked to the ability of the rural poor to exercise the franchise, resonated with northern sympathizers, prompting the development of Friends of SNCC chapters to support those starving for freedom. Chapter Three investigates the Black Panther Party's community food initiatives. Beginning with free breakfast programs for schoolchildren and culminating in spectacular food giveaways, these endeavors worked to neutralize the power of hunger to inhibit the physical development, educational advancement, and political engagement of the urban poor. In doing so, the Panthers forged unlikely alliances while sparking police and FBI repression. Programs and campaigns such as these acknowledged and resisted the function of hunger in maintaining structures of white privilege and black oppression, politicizing hunger and malnutrition by construing them as intended outcomes of institutional racism. This study offers revealing historical precursors to twenty-first century debates about hunger, food security, food deserts, childhood nutrition, obesity, agricultural subsidies, and federal food aid, investigating the civil rights era through the lens of food politics while adding historical context to scholarship of food justice.

With shows such as Big Bang Theory and the increased mainstreaming of San Diego Comic-con, now more than ever before, it is acceptable to be a “nerd”. The question now becomes what efforts are being made to appeal to fans of color in traditional “nerd” activities, specifically comic books (this can include television shows and movies based on comic book characters), anime, and science fiction. Throughout the decades, there have been various attempts to have a discourse about the lack of diversity in nerd culture, both among its creators and characters from various properties considered beloved to nerds. Only, at the time of this writing, in recent years does there seem to be an increase among fans of color discussing these issues in the world at large, and not just in their own social group(s). This research will discover how minority fans feel about representation, or lack thereof, in the three above fandom. It will examine how minority fans feel about specific instants involving race and ethnicity in fandom from the past year. What I have discovered is that, issues of race are not discussed among the majority of fans and creators. Occasionally, when such issues are discussed there is an amount of hostility from white fans.

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<p>This dissertation explores the concept of <italic>agential abjection</italic> through Jean Genet's involvement with and writings about the struggles of disenfranchised and pathologized peoples. Following Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler has argued that modern subjectivity requires the production of a domain of abjected beings denied subjecthood and forced to live "unlivable" lives. "Agencies of Abjection" brings these feminist theories of abjection to bear on the multiple coordinates of social difference by exploring forms of abjection linked to sexuality, criminality, colonialism, and racialization. Situating Genet within an archive that includes the writings of former inmates of penal colonies, Francophone intellectuals, and Black Panther Party members, I analyze both the historical forces that produce abjection and the collective forms of agency that emerge from subaltern social forms. I find that the abjected are often able to elaborate impure, perverse, and contingent forms of agency from within the very institutions and discourses that would deny them subjecthood. </p><p>"Agencies of Abjection" carefully situates Genet's writing within the discursive fields in which it intervenes, including that of the memoirs and testimonies of former inmates of the boys' penal colonies, of Francophone decolonizing poets and intellectuals, and of Black Panther prison writings. This method illuminates subaltern genealogies of thought on the problems of abjection, subjection, and subaltern agency so central to Genet's writing. By charting the twists and turns between Genet's writing and that of other subaltern writers of abjection, "Agencies of Abjection" reads Genet as a thinker continually involved in a process of exchange, intervention, borrowing, and revision concerning the specific histories and experiences of social abjection.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (M. Div. with Concentration: Christian Doctrine)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2001. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-126).

Thesis (M. Div. with Concentration: Christian Doctrine)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2001. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-126).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 344-364).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 190 p.; also includes graphics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 186-190). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 186-190). Also available online as computer text data (1 PDF file, 0.66 MB). via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Thesis (M. Div. with Concentration: Christian Doctrine)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2001. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-126).