This study examines the impact of parental metharnphetmline use on the child welfare system in Cobb County Department of Family and Children Services. This study was based on the prenlise that methmnphetamine is contributing to mi increase in the number of children entering the child welfare system in large numbers. Data was gathered and analyzed from surveys completed by case managers in the Plepartment of Family and Children Services in Cobb County, Georgia. Findings from the study revealed that of the thirty participants, ninety-three percent agreed that parental methamphetamine use is impacting the child welfare system greatly. The conclusions drawn from the finding suggest that additional research and services are needed in child welfare systems to assist the parents in successful recovery and lessen the burden on the system.

The purpose of this exploratory descriptive study was to compare the length of time foster care children were spending in care two years prior to the passage of Senate Bill 611 and two years after the legislation took effect in one Northwest Georgia county, Floyd County. Length of time in care was also examined to determine if differences existed among age, reason for placement, and racial background. An interview was utilized to complete the Agency Protocol and Procedures instrument with the local county Director of the Department of Family and Children Services and the Floyd County Juvenile Court Judge. Findings indicated that new written policies are in place and extensive training has been completed in the Floyd County Department of Family and Children Services in relation to the changes associated with Georgia’s Senate Bill 611. A case study method was employed to complete the study of a sample size of forty children in foster care reviewed by the Citizen Review Panel of the Floyd County Juvenile Court. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used. Paired t-tests were conducted to determine if the mean length of time in foster care for children sampled differed prior to the passage of Georgia Senate Bill 611 from July 1, 1994 to June 30, 1996 as compared to after its passage and implementation for the period of July 1, 1996 to June 30, 1998. Non-significant results were found when comparing all children as a group. However, the average placement time from pre and post legislation was found to be 16 months. Similar results were found when making comparisons by age, racial background, and reason for primary placement. Almost all age, racial background, and primary reason for placement subgroups were found to show large reductions in mean length of time in foster care. However, when considering age subgroups, mean increases were actually found in the two youngest categories. Small numbers of children within subgroups and large variability may contribute to the non-significant results even though some large reductions in mean length of time were found.

The purpose of this project is to bring attention to the urgent need to educate African American youth on issues regarding finance and investment for the future. Through educating youth, they are further allowed to discover personal economic empowerment. The basis for economically empowering youth is derived out of the ministry setting of the Saint Thomas African Methodist Episcopal Church. The setting is the place where the ministry issues find its genesis. Consequently, the project: Dollars and Sense: Youth Seizing Financial Skills and Opportunities for the Future is designed to educate the youth of Thomasville, Georgia. One of the limitations of my proposed project is that there was great difficulty finding data that bears similarity to my project. Consequently, I am engaging in an area where little research has been done and there is very little documentation. The project will provide both theoretical and practical application for young people. Various academic perspectives will be examined in order to provide insight into the causes of the economic plight of so many blacks in America, and hopeful solutions to the problem. The empirical disciplines are as follows: sociology, psychology, anthropology, political perspective, and African American history. The normative category will include the theological and biblical. There will also be an exploration of various economic programs that can aid one in achieving economic empowerment such as: Homeownership, Mutual Funds, Individual Deposit Accounts, Public/Private Ventures, and Entrepreneurship. The program will bring in professionals in the field of business and finance to introduce (and hopefully invigorate a desire in) the youth to pursue financial stability for the future. The program will be analyzed and reflected upon to determine its strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations for the future.

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This study discusses the artistic career of Leonard de Paur, particularly his work in choral music where he has been an important figure as an arranger, and founder and conductor of the de Paur Infantry Chorus and the de Paur Chorus. His arrangements of African-American and African folk music illustrate de Paur's artistic links and progression from two of the important leaders of the African-American folk tradition, Frederick Work of the Fisk Jubilee tradition, and Hall Johnson. With his musical training from these men and from Columbia University, the Juilliard School of Music, and private study with Pierre Monteux, de Paur and his arrangements exhibit what W. E. B. Du Bois described in The Souls of Black Folk as the duality of the black American. This study analyzes seven of de Paur's spiritual and work songs arrangements, and four African song arrangements, and reveals the duality of Western and African musical elements in de Paur and his arrangements.

This project is the first to investigate the way in which Ethiopians view the Rastafari, a post-colonial religious faith. Since originating in Jamaica in the 1930s, Rastafari have moved to the East African country to settle, viewing the country as the Promised Land. Given this centrality of Ethiopia to Rastafari, my dissertation documents the perception of Rastafari and Rastafarians within Ethiopia and the role these immigrants play within Ethiopian society. The methodology used is that of thick description—making an attempt to engage with as many different narratives about the Rastafari as possible. Thick description allows for an understanding of what is happening as regards the interaction between Rastafari and Ethiopians, but also provides a sense of context and meaning. After extensive interviewing in the Ethiopian cities of Shashemene and Addis Ababa, a comprehensive review of Ethiopian media coverage as well as analyses of academic, religious and government documents, the multiplicity of perspectives found demonstrated a view of a unique immigrant community, as well as a multifaceted view of Ethiopia and Ethiopianness. I draw from the many narratives about the Rastafari a sense of what these narratives can inform relative to Ethiopian identity itself. Unlike traditional development workers who stay on average two years, Rastafari wish to settle in Ethiopia. The challenge, therefore, to Ethiopians is to find a way to legally recognize these immigrants within the already complex historical and social spectrum of Ethiopian identity. The Rastafarian desire for citizenship and involvement in Ethiopian society challenges the idea of what it means to be Ethiopian and simultaneously demands that Ethiopian and Rastafarian identity re-evaluate its sense of self. As the Rastafari involve themselves more fully in Ethiopia, through the establishment of both humanitarian and business initiatives, and engage w / Ce projet est le premier à explorer la manière dont les Éthiopiens voient le Rastafari, une croyance religieuse post-coloniale. Depuis leur début en Jamaïque au courant des années 1930, les Rastafaris ont déménagé pour s'établir dans le pays d'Afrique de l'Est, le voyant comme la terre promise. Due en partie au rôle central que détient l'Éthiopie au sein de la religion Rastafari, ma dissertation documente la perception du Rastafari et des Rastafariens à l'intérieur de l'Éthiopie et le rôle que joue ces immigrants dans la société éthiopienne. La méthodolie utilisée est celle de « description dense »—tentant d'engager avec autant de récits sur le Rastafari que possible. La méthode de description épaisse permet à la fois une compréhension de l'interaction entre les Rastafariens et les Éthiopiens, tout en fournissant un contexte et un sens. À travers de nombreuses entrevues dans les villes éthiopiennes de Shashamene et d'Addis Abeba, une critique compréhensive de la couverture médiatique de l'Éthiopie, ainsi qu'une analyse de documents académiques, religieux et politiques, la multiplicité des perspectives retrouvées présentent un regard unique sur la communauté immigrante, ainsi qu'un point de vue varié sur l'Éthiopie et l'éthiopicité. De plusieurs récits sur les Rastafariens, je retire un sens de ce que ces récits peuvent dire sur l'identité éthiopienne comme telle. Les Rastafariens diffèrent des traveilleurs en développement international puisque ceux-ci ne restent qu'en moyenne deux ans, alors que les Rastafariens eux, désirent s'établir de façon permanent en Éthiopie. Par conséquent, le défi qui se présente pour les Éthiopiens est de trouver une manière de reconnaître légalement ces immigrants à l'intérieur de la complexité historique et sociale de l'identité éthiopienne. Le désir Rastafarien de citoyenneté et d'implication au sein de$

Through images of disintegration and disappearance, American narratives reveal the black subject's problematic relationship to the (white) Other's desire and the language of that desire. Jacques Lacan's theories of subjectivity--especially the mirror stage and aphanisis, the subject's disappearance behind the signifier--illuminate the impact of racist signification on black bodies in twentieth-century American novels, where epithets like "nigger" invoke the mutilation and disappearance of African American subjects. Images of corporal disintegration reveal the reversal of the mirror-stage identification inaugurated by the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, lynching, and scientific and literary manifestations of Negrophobia. Post-Plessy novels often feature Jim Crow segregation and the "black" body's destruction by the "white" voice. The Negrophobe rape plot infects James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) after the anonymous narrator is called "nigger." He chooses to "pass" for white after failing to project his disintegration onto his uncanny doubles. In Nella Larsen's Passing (1929), Irene reenacts Lacan's mirror stage by assuming Clare as her idealized image. But "Nig"--the signifier Clare's white husband supplies--invokes Clare's death and undoes Irene, whose final fainting is aphanisis. In William Faulkner's Light in August (1932), Joe Christmas' homicidal violence and suicidal "shattering" represent capitulations to Yoknapatawpha's insistence that he is a "nigger." Exemplary of the literary responses to racist signification since Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Toni Morrison's progression from The Bluest Eye (1970) to Beloved (1987) charts the restoration of voice and body to historically "missing persons" effaced by cultural institutions designed to "teach" them their place. Schooled in the white standards of worth symbolized by the primer motif, characters in The Bluest Eye cannot resist aphanisis; in Beloved, however, characters combat aphanisis by refusing the masters' prerogative to define them. This triumph over aphanisis also emerges in the reappropriation of the black body-in-pieces inspired by Jet magazine's 1955 photographs of Emmett Till's mutilated corpse. Till symbolizes African American integrity in works by Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Madison Jones and others.