This dissertation investigates key similarities between l9th-century slave accounts and what I call "hip-hop captivity narratives." As a corrective to the negative attention accorded hip-hop, in general, my project identifies particular aspects of slave authors' literary strategies that urban hip-hop artists reinvent in their own music and filmmaking works. My primary goal is to position hip-hop texts as the most recent arrivals in a long-standing African American tradition of instructional, survivalist literature. Such a goal closes two gulfs: one, between "the literary academy" and "the street," and two, between hip-hop generationers' and their Black Civil Rights forbearers' perceptions of social and/or communal progress. The Introduction situates my work within African American Studies and argues a New Historicist approach for the study of hip-hop culture. Chapter One, "The Education of Hip-Hop," argues that more than a form of entertainment, hip-hop is an educational project. I delineate elements that contemporary rap music and film borrow from the slave narrative tradition. Chapter Two, "Sounds from the Underground: The Pedagogy of Survival in Rap Texts," argues that the music of underground and mainstream rappers publicly and privately demonstrates Black youth's cultural ties to one another and to their history, reinforcing the bonds of shared political objectives, such as unity and liberation. Examining Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) through the lens of DuBoisian double consciousness, Chapter Three, "Be a Man!, Get a Job! Stay Black: Dangerous Ghetto Manifestoes in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing," provides a novel reading of some challenges young men experience as they attempt to simultaneously actualize manhood, Blackness, and socio-economic mobility in a post-modern, post-Civil Rights era still fraught with vestiges of the period of slavery. Finally, Chapter Four, "We Ride Together; We Die Together: Thug Misses, Gangsta Bytches, and 'Ryde-or-Die Chicks'," discusses the lyrics and images of female rappers and reads Black female characters in the hip-hop filmic text, Set it Off (1996). Such an exercise highlights key ways young urban women publicly support the actuation of Black manhood within the boundaries of male-dominated popular cultural forms.

In the fall of 1952, George Platt Lynes created one of his most memorable photographs: the image of two nude men--one black, one white--reclining in an intimate embrace. Lynes titled the print Man in His Element, but due to its overt homoeroticism and interracial content he could not show it in public. Instead, Lynes privately distributed the photograph and its variants through the mail and told the story of their creation in letters to a close friend. Lynes's letters were an integral part of his artistic and voyeuristic activities. Through writing Lynes framed the ambivalent racial coding of Man in His Element and its variants, and in doing so, he asserted his authority as a white, socially privileged man. Lynes's writings also functioned as a form of confessional discourse which enabled the photographer to document and speak the truth about his marginalized sexual identity and artistic production.

The dynamics between "American" constructions of ethnicity and the aspiration for and resistance to "American" identity are central to this study of several novels marked by their subjects' diverse racial, ethnic, gendered, regional, and class provenance. Beginning with the African-American tradition, I consider how Harriet Wilson's Our Nig (1859) and James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912) recognize and critique the evolution of race and class politics from the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth. These novels, positioned as "bookends" to the troubled history of post-emancipation politics, sharply delineate the problems of self-authorizing "other" voices in dialogue with national identity at the same time that they establish prior historical ground for considering what is at stake in subsequent texts. The major portion of this study concerns four novels from the 1920s and 1930s, and is drawn from two cultures differently absorbed in the dialogicism of borders--urban Jewish New York and Chicano Texas along the Texas-Mexican border. The texts include Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers, Jovita Gonzalez's and Eve Raleigh's Caballero, and Americo Paredes's George Washington Gomez. Among these texts exists a wealth of discourses that constitute rich pre-conditions for current debates on multiculturalism. The juxtaposition of Jewish and Chicano novels suggests parallel problems in cultures marked both by strong religious and secular traditions and by histories of diverse persecutions that finally meet within the contested meaning of Americanization. The worlds these novels reveal assert an ongoing making of an "America" that is fundamentally multicultural in the complex, often fraught negotiation of Anglo hegemony. The uneven parallel between the immigrant Jew who arrives from elsewhere and the colonized Mexican who remains surrounded by colonizers provides variant ways of looking at persistent conceptions of the "New World." If early Anglo mythology has long been dependent on notions of recurrent frontiers harboring "a nation of immigrants" within a consensual state of monologic Anglo hegemony, the shifting continental borders of the U.S. along with the immensity of its ongoing demographic changes have always offered a different model. The ways in which these novels dissect and contest that hegemony give this subject its voice.

This dissertation examines the intersection of resistance, gender, and respectability in African American literature from 1831 to 1903 through the figure of the "common woman." As a category of analysis, the common woman is an alternative to the bourgeois African American heroine, and is characterized by a number of qualities: the lack of formal education; reliance on folk-based methods of knowledge; non-traditional views on the family; aggressive articulation of her rights and the rights of the community; and finally, her use of labor as a tool for manipulating the culture of oppression. While current theoretical frameworks of literary representations of resistance rely heavily on the primacy of iconographic black protagonists, the common woman is a new imagining of black respectability that is defined by a folk-based construction of the black self. I trace the literary development of the common woman through a historically grounded evaluation of black women's labor within the context of the West Indian and American slave pasts, Reconstruction, and racial uplift rhetoric. I argue that placing the literary common woman in conversation with black women's labor history destabilizes the emphasis on the bourgeois, representational heroine by establishing a pattern in which the common woman resists white racism by virtue of her position in the economy. Because the common woman is not generally regarded as race leader, she is free from the imperative to facilitate exchange with Anglo-Americans and is thus free to assertively critique and subvert racism. In short, by focusing more on labor than on literacy, and more on maintaining the black community than on fostering interracial exchange, the common woman is the means through which nineteenth-century African American writers voice violent, subversive, and otherwise unspeakable critiques of the American nation that challenge the serviceability of the genteel heroine as the primary voice of resistance. By using the common woman as the voice of resistance, middle-class writers were able to critique the nation while also coming to terms with the complexities of intra-racial class conflict.

In Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, and Paradise, Toni Morrison creates characters who cannot be neatly categorized as exclusively male or female. These "psychologically intersexed" characters claim their own agency to demolish male/female, homosexual/heterosexual, White/Black binaries. Morrison's open-ended examination of gender roles leads her readers to see the "intersectional" forces behind our gender assumptions. Thus, by disrupting white heterosexual patriarchy, Morrison succeeds in her stated quest to "open a wider landscape" in American literature, allowing these bigendered characters the freedom to search for new identities and giving them a new language that more accurately reflects the authentic individuals they are striving to become.

<p>The goal of this study is to examine racial residential segregation in U.S. metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. The study uses 1990-2010 decennial census data to answer a broad theoretical question: is the historical black-white color line being replaced by a black-nonblack or white-nonwhite color line? The results show that black-white segregation is higher than black-nonblack and white-nonwhite segregation in metropolitan areas, nonmetropolitan areas, and the United States as a whole. A multivariate analysis reveals that population size tends to be associated with higher segregation in metropolitan areas and lower segregation in nonmetropolitan areas. As a control variable, diversity seems to play an important role in segregation by U.S. region. The study concludes that further research is needed to examine how the color line might change, especially in nonmetropolitan areas, which experienced rapid minority population growth during the 2000s.

<p> Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) continue to represent a great legacy in the history of education for African Americans; however, these institutions are faced with contemporary challenges that include: declining Black enrollment, financial constraints, and questions concerning the value an HBCU degree holds. Research illustrates how HBCUs are academically and culturally accommodating for Black students (Albritton, 2012; Fountaine, 2012; Fries-Britt &amp; Turner, 2002; Outcalt &amp; Skewes-Cox, 2002; Thompson, 2008), but when deciding on which college to attend, high schoolers give more consideration to financial access and prestige, and less to the development or affirmation of racial identities (Braddock &amp; Hua, 2006; Fleming, 1984; Freeman &amp; Thomas, 2002; Tobolowsky, Outcalt, &amp; McDonough, 2005). The current scope of literature fails to recognize Black high school students' perspectives on electing to attend an HBCU (Dancy &amp; Brown, 2008; Davis, 2004; Dillon, 1999; Freeman, 1999). Critical Race Afrocentricity provides a lens to examine how HBCUs serve as a historical and contemporary marker for educational opportunity among Black college students in a time where the concept of race is seemingly not a determinant in college selectivity. This study examines the perspectives of 13 Black college-bound high school students in regards to attending an HBCU. Since there is a slight decline in Black enrollment at HBCUs, it is necessary to examine the contemporary role HBCUs will serve for future generations of Black students. Findings of the study indicate that Black teens recognize the intellectual, cultural, and social value in attending an HBCU; however, they feel that factors such as financial affordability and academic reputation are more pertinent factors in college selectivity. Furthermore, there is a need for future research to examine the participants' perspectives (as teens aspiring to attend college) to their collegiate experiences.</p>

<p> This qualitative study explored substance abuse providers' attitudes, perceptions and beliefs about the impact of crack cocaine in the African American community.</p><p> Fifteen participants were surveyed utilizing a semi-structured interview guide about (a) their experiences working with African American clients; (b) biases, stereotypes and stigmas that have impacted African Americans in relation to the use of crack cocaine; and (c) attitudes, perceptions and beliefs about the media's role in the racialization of imagery and its impact on the African American community.</p><p> Participants reported multiple significant indicators regarding a client's success in treatment as well as the competence of providers who work with African American clients. Furthermore, participants indicated that a thorough knowledge base of the historical experience of African Americans and its implication for the use of crack cocaine is necessary. Mental health professionals need to have a better understanding of the historical impact of crack cocaine on African American individuals, families and the community as a whole.</p>

<p> Studies have shown that involvement in a student organization can improve the academic and psychosocial outcomes of African American male students (Harper, 2006b; Robertson &amp; Mason, 2008; Williams &amp; Justice, 2010). Further, Harper, Byars, and Jelke (2005) stated that African American fraternities and sororities (i.e., Black Greek-letter organizations [BGLOs]) are the primary venues by which African American students become involved on campus. This grounded theory study examined the relationship between membership in a BOLO and the overall college experiences of African American male college students at a Predominantly White Institution (PWI). Eleven themes were identified in the study indicating that membership had a positive impact on the college experiences of African American male college students at a PWI. The study also examined the perceptions of counselors and other college student personnel regarding their role in improving the academic and psychosocial outcomes of African American male college students. Participants indicated that their role is to provide academic and psychosocial support for these students; they offered strategies for PWIs to improve the persistence and success of these students. Implications for counseling, higher education, and Black Greek life are provided.</p>

<p> This study examines young, Black women's hair practices and perspectives within the current wave of the Natural Hair Movement. Based on twelve in-depth interviews with Black women in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, this analysis uses Black feminist thought and standpoint theory to center the concept of "natural" hair and explore participants' relationships to it. The analysis is attentive to the ways family, peers, and media have influenced Black women's hair practices and perspectives, and grounds these in the history of racialized, gendered, and class-related perceptions of Black women's hair. My interviews reveal that "natural" has become such a desirable label that even Black women in this study who straighten their hair consider themselves "natural" due to the term's newfound subjective meaning. This indicates that the Natural Hair Movement has contributed to the rhetorical success of this label, even while its meaning has now expanded so broadly that it includes nearly every hair care practice other than chemical relaxing. While some may argue that this inclusive definition of "natural" dilutes an important cultural distinction between Afrocentric and Eurocentric hair practices, it may also indicate that these Black women seek not to be divided over hairstyle preferences but rather, seek a collective identity as Black women who are free to make informed choices on the basis of what is important to them.</p>