This study investigated four black plays that were produced on Broadway and Off-Broadway between 1969 and 1981. The study asserts that playwrights can be rhetors and that their works can have wide persuasive appeal. The plays chosen represented critically acclaimed works which had the potential to reach a wide and disparate audience. Each play was produced in at least one other medium outside the New York legitimate stage. / Additionally, the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s had a profound influence on black theatre. The movement proclaimed that art be functional. The revolutionary playwrights of this period created plays whose function was to develop a revolutionary and nationalistic consciousness through their plays. The possibility for incompatibility of philosophic thought seemed likely to exist between the black playwright whose plays are produced for the integrated world of the commercial theatre and the black playwright whose work is produced to address black audiences exclusively. This seeming incompatibility led to the formulation of the following research questions: (1) To what extent do these plays conform to or reject the ideology of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s? (2) What social issues do these plays raise? (3) What rhetorical strategies can be found in the works of these playwrights? / The study focuses on rhetorical and critical analysis. The plays were examined to determine strategies employed to address a black audiences and to appeal to general audience as well. Aristotelian theory of modes of proof and types of discourse were used to determine the rhetorical structure of the plays. / The study provides an overview of the history of the professional black playwright in the United States in order to place the plays in an historical and social perspective. Additionally, production data on all the plays is provided, and detailed synopses of the works are also given. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-09, Section: A, page: 2486. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

According to a review of the political behavior literature, social class and race are important determinants of political ideology on various types of issues. For example, the literature indicated that lower classes tend to be more liberal on economic issues and more conservative on social issues than the upper classes. In addition, the literature indicated that blacks tend to be more liberal on both economic and social issues than whites. / Since the 1960s, the nation's policies have changed to afford blacks more equal opportunities in education and employment. As a result of these policies, more blacks have moved into middle class socioeconomic status. This study examined the effects of middle class status on black's public opinion and political behavior. In addition, this study contrasts the public opinion choice of the black middle with the public opinion choices of the black lower and white middle classes. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-10, Section: A, page: 3144. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

What too many literary historians have overlooked is that Richard Wright continued to produce important works long after his departure for Paris, especially in the genre of nonfiction. My purpose is to show that the last half of his career stands up to the passage of time and to any comparison to his earlier work, of which it is a culmination. / I have chosen a chronological progression for this study, beginning with a biographical sketch in Chapter One and proceeding in subsequent chapters through his successive books after he went to Paris. Near the end of his life Wright advocated a militarization of society, whereby undeveloped countries could "project immediately into the twentieth century." I develop this perspective through a critical analysis of the following books: Black Power, Pagan Spain, The Color Curtain, and White Man, Listen!. I show how each book stands as a separate artistic entity. This material constitutes chapters two through five. / In Chapter Six I analyze Wright's last novel, The Long Dream, and show that because the critics rejected his nonfiction, Wright felt compelled to return to the fiction that had made him famous. I also argue, however, that in this last novel, Wright re-analyzes the major idea he had introduced in his nonfiction. / To limit Wright's achievements to two or three books is a grave disservice to academic scholarship as well as to Wright and Afro-American culture. Therefore I argue that we must study Wright's later works as well as his political activism in Paris if we are to gain a complete understanding of such a complex and fascinating writer. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-06, Section: A, page: 1455. / Major Professor: William T. Lhamon, Jr. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.

This study provides critical insight into the long neglected contribution of black American women to the autobiographical genre. Although other works are mentioned, this scholarly endeavor is an analysis of the themes and structuring devices embodied in the autobiographies of four black women: Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, and Zora Neale Hurston. / The introductory chapters examines variously formulated definitions and other elements, including style, ascribed to the genre of autobiography. It also considers the concepts of truth and falsity, the female autobiographical tradition, and the black autobiographical tradition. / The selected autobiographies are analyzed in individual chapters. Angelou's four books--I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, and The Heart of a Woman--Brooks's Report from Part One, Hansberry's To Be Young, Gifted and Black, and Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road reveal common technical/organizational devices. Most essential to the black woman autobiographer is the question for personal identity. Other themes include the importance of education, the value of the work ethic, an expressed attitude towards religious devotion, and the connection between art and social responsibility. In addition, an examination of the structuring devices shows a unanimous use of the fragmented narrative, whose digressions, anecdotes, and family portraits form distinct thematic units. Also, these life stories evince either a "life-as-journey" pattern of development (both literal and metaphorical) based on repeated movement or a "life-as-stability" pattern with the self staying in one place and forging an identity there. Language, too, in all its manifestations, helps to establish a textual self at the center of the autobiographical act. Overall, these black women's autobiographies, in addition to giving voice to women, reveal what it means to be human in a society that denies humanity, growth, and fulfillment. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-06, Section: A, page: 1456. / Major Professor: Fred L. Standley. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of English, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-04, Section: A, page: 1133. Adviser: Susan Gubar. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed June 18, 2007)."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Anthropology, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed June 27, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: A, page: 2213. Advisers: Gracia Clark; Richard Wilk.

<p> It is not known why the chronic mis-education of Black students has neither been adequately investigated nor treated as the most significant, widespread phenomenon of twenty-first century pedagogy. To attempt to understand this quandary, it was urgent to ask: How do Black educators understand the education of Black students? Are they able to incorporate the tensions and varied experiences they have had as students into their professional repertoire? This study described how Black educators&rsquo; unique cultural perspectives might enable increased insight into the problem of mis-education. Critical race theory framed this study with an emphasis on narrative inquiry and transformative learning. I interweaved narrative/counter-narrative and critical event research methods as both theoretical and methodological frameworks. I engaged in multi-part interviews and observations of 5 educators to explore their unique biographical narratives and analyze how their lives and teaching practices might better inform the success of Black students. Findings indicated (a) educators uniquely experienced the vestiges of mis-education as they faced insidious forms of racism during the course of their academic journey, (b) educators sought to interrupt the racism that their White teachers&rsquo; and peers exhibited, (c) educators encouraged students to use their voices and various platforms to effectively counteract their oppression, and (d) educators engaged transformative pedagogies in overt and covert ways depending on both the social and the teaching context(s). Based on the findings of this study, a liberation-based pedagogy is recommended to ensure the empowerment, increased performance, and well-rounded education of Black students.</p><p>

<p> Anglophone, Protestant literary traditions figure heavily in the historicization of the novel and the central role privacy plays in the narrativization of concealment. Protestantism&rsquo;s focus on piety through individual self-reflection has been credited as the catalyst for the nineteenth-century inward turn of the novel and its invention of private life and the private individual. Within this Protestant-influenced novel, privacy constitutes one&rsquo;s political legitimacy and is a concept that has also dominated how literature within and beyond the Anglosphere has imagined the interior qualities that constitute race and racial difference. </p><p> A different tradition, influenced by a Catholic context that sees black self-identity and interiorities as inherently insurgent in their inscrutability, opacity, and secrecy, subverts this Protestant literary tradition. While the literary invention of interiority during the inward turn of the novel depends on evolution of public and private divisions, this dissertation will examine how several Catholic-influenced novels posit that the invention of black interiority depends on secrecy not only as disruptive but also as generative, where the language and specter of black humanity emerge as racialized threat after the Haitian Revolution and as a means of undermining the racism and patriarchalism within privacy and the inadequacy of the fixed ideals it creates.</p><p>

<p> Small businesses play a vital role in the U.S. economy and represent 99.7% of all U.S. businesses. Small business failure rate is 50% within the initial 5 years. Creating and executing a well-formulated marketing strategy is essential to business sustainability. Effective marketing strategy builds small business survival rates and supports long term execution advantages. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore the marketing strategies that African immigrant small grocery store owners use to sustain their businesses for longer than 5 years. The population included 5 successful first-generation African immigrant small business owners located in the Bronx County who had developed a well-formulated marketing strategy. Kohli and Jaworski&rsquo;s marketing orientation theory served as the conceptual framework. The van Kaam data analysis process was used to validate findings. The data analysis included diverse mind maps, project maps, explorations with participant response and document analysis. Three marketing strategy themes emerged: customer retention and attitudes, inventory that promote value for potential buyers that result in superior performances, conventional and unconventional marketing that focuses on lowering cost of product and services to meet market needs of individuals. The findings revealed several features of how to use marketing strategies effectively to improve stability in the local economy by reducing small business failure rates, increasing profitability, and promoting buyer value. Application of the findings may result in a positive social change by increasing local community employment opportunities and enhancing residents&rsquo; standards of living.</p><p>